Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [76]
The question we have to ask is whether this is a component part of our new “sovereign democracy” or merely a side effect?
We look forward to hearing from the Military Prosecutor’s Office, the province of Sergey Fridinsky, whose duty it is to supervise the actions of members of the Russian Interior Ministry; from Yury Chaika, the Prosecutor-General, whose duty it is to supervise the behaviour of top-flight state servants, and also less exalted members of the Prosecutor’s Office.
The Chechen Prosecutor’s Office has confirmed the above report both in respect of the severing of the head and its being sewn back on, on July 28–29 in Kurchaloy. It has not yet indicated that it has opened a criminal case in this connection.
Vasiliy Panchenko, the Head of the Press Service of Russian Interior Ministry Troops, told Novaya gazeta, “As of August 2 no applications or requests have been received at the Headquarters of the Interior Troops from the Prosecutor’s Office, or by the Commanding Officer of the Joint Military Command in the North Caucasus Region. Accordingly it is not possible to make any comment, but we are prepared to respond to any inquiry from the Prosecutor’s Office in respect of Interior Troops.”
The Press Service of President Alu Alkhanov of the Chechen Republic declined to comment.
LAYING DOWN ARMS, GETTING RID OF KADYROV
August 14, 2006
An amnesty is a good thing. Hope is always better than no hope, but how is the “2006 Amnesty” for resistance fighters proceeding in the North Caucasus? Why have those who have surrendered (officially there are about 80 of them) behaved as they have? Who are they? What needs to be included in the law on amnesty which will begin its passage through the Duma in September to encourage others to follow their example? What conditions and whose guarantees are needed by those who wish to surrender?
In search of answers to these questions I have travelled through Ingushetia, Dagestan and, of course, Chechnya. I have found the situation very different from how it is presented in reports by the intelligence services.
Discovery No. 1, and the most important one: those who have laid down their arms as claimed in the official propaganda simply do not exist. Nobody who was hiding in the forests and mountains or cellars has gone to the Prosecutor’s Office or has given an undertaking to stay at their registered address. Why not? What is the real situation?
First, Dagestan and Ingushetia. The situation in Chechnya is radically different from that in these other republics. Dagestan is currently home to the greatest number of active “jamaats” in the North Caucasus. In the anti-terrorist terminology of our intelligence services, jamaats are considered to be illegal armed groups. There are plenty of people in jamaats who could surrender if they chose to.
Surrendering Dagestan-style has, however, uniquely commercial characteristics. There is already a going rate. You have to pay the Prosecutor 60,000 roubles to get him to formalise your surrendering with an admission of guilt. If you haven’t got 60,000 roubles you face the consequences, which Putin has described as “active measures against those who fail to lay down their arms.” In Dagestan they say wryly that the statistics about those seeking to take advantage of the amnesty tell us only how well the mainly district and city prosecutors involved are prospering.
On August 8 it was reported that, in another act of terrorism, Bitar Bitarov, the Buinaksk District Prosecutor, was killed by a bomb. During all the years of the Second Chechen War, this district has been the bloodiest in Dagestan in terms of terrorist acts, secret operations and skirmishes. Bitarov has been killed, but it is unlikely that this act of sabotage bore any relation to the new amnesty and its money-making opportunities. The resistance fighters know full well, and they have told me as much, that this 60,000 rouble pay-off will have