Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [16]
Rezeda sketches a map of their street to show how the troop detachment advanced. “This is our house,” she says, “and this one belonged to our neighbour, an old-age pensioner called Sultan Temirov. Contract soldiers decapitated him and took his head away. Somebody told us they usually take the head if they suspect someone is related to resistance fighters. Before the war Sultan’s brother was the Speaker in the Chechen Parliament. That is why they threw the rest of his body to the dogs. After the federals had moved on to other houses, the neighbours managed to save his left leg and groin from the frenzied dogs. That is all they were able to bury.”
Witnesses believe more than 100 people were killed during the security sweep in Aldy. These are the only available figures so far. The greatest suffering was visited on those still living in Voronezhskaya and Matasha Mazayev Streets. (Matasha Mazayev was a Hero of the Soviet Union during the Second World War who was born and grew up in this village.) It befell them entirely by chance, simply because those are the first streets you come to when entering Aldy.
Rezeda continues, picturing the soldiers’ progress through the houses. “They did us, then Granny Rakiat and Sultan Temirov. Then they moved on to the Khaidarovs and shot the father and son there, Gulu and Vakhu. The old man was over 80. Beyond them was Avalu Sugaipov, an elderly man who had refugees living with him. We hadn’t even had time to learn their names, but they were two men, a woman, and a five-year-old girl. All the grown-ups they burned alive with a flame-thrower, including the mother in front of her daughter. Before executing them the soldiers gave the little girl a tin of condensed milk and said, “Run off and play.” I imagine she has lost her wits. The Musayevs lived at No. 120 Voronezhskaya Street; they shot old Yakub, his son Umar, and his nephews, Yusup, Abdrakhman and Suleiman. The only one they didn’t kill was Khasan, an old man who owned the house. He was considered the Elder of the whole of Chernorechiye, but they didn’t just leave him alone. The federals kicked the bodies of the Musayevs together and forced the old man to lie across all five of them and not to move. Then they fired a burst of semi-automatic fire and wounded him. They told him if he got up they would kill him, and then they stood around smoking. Khasan didn’t move and they went off, pleased with themselves. I can’t go on!”
Rezeda runs outside. Aslanbek crawls over the bunks into a far corner and turns away. Their elder sister, Larisa, takes up the story. She tells of deeds beyond the imagining of anyone but a psychopath. She tells how the trees in their street are now decorated with monstrous bloody blotches where neighbours were put up against them and shot. “You can’t clean it off! That’s why I will never be able to go back there. I just couldn’t live beside those trees where they murdered people I knew and loved. When we left Aldy we saw the men who had survived crying like women; young men’s beards had turned grey. When we were in Ingushetia I saw a television report on the security sweep operation in Aldy. They showed a female sniper they said was Chechen who had supposedly been shooting at the federals from houses in Aldy. They claimed that was why the reprisals were so severe. I couldn’t believe it. It was Tanya Ryzhaya. Everyone in Chernorechiye knows she is an alkie, and, incidentally, Russian. For more than two years her arms have been shaking so violently she couldn’t hold a spoon. We had to feed her, and here they are saying Tanya Ryzhaya was the justification for this whole nightmare in Aldy!”
A boy of about seven jumps down from the bench. He points a wooden rifle at me and shouts,