Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [77]
My next stop was in Ingushetia, where the boldest and most militant jamaats operate. Only three people are claimed to have surrendered there. Their statements were shown on Republican television, but all three had been abducted several months ago. The procedure was what is by now entirely customary in Ingushetia: they were kidnapped by members of “unidentified security agencies” and later turned up in the pre-trial detention facility in Vladikavkaz, accused of participation in an illegal armed formation.
A detail common to all of them is that they are currently imprisoned. They are now in exactly the same situation as they were before they stated that they wished to be amnestied. None of them has been allowed to return home. The investigation against all of them is being conducted by a team at the Prosecutor-General’s Office led by Konstantin Krivorotov. His efforts to eradicate the causes which led to Beslan were supposed to decrease the enthusiasm for terrorist activity in the North Caucasus but have, unfortunately, had precisely the opposite effect. For almost two years his investigative activity has consisted of designating people as terrorists while the real bandits roam freely through the forests and mountains, and plant bombs when and where they will.
Of the three Ingushes who surrendered (and that they had done so was announced by their relatives and lawyers long before Patrushev made his amnesty proposals), we know that they were tortured during the investigation and signed “voluntary confessions.” Lawyers defending different accused under investigation by Krivorotov’s team say no offers to include them in the amnesty were made by the investigators. They comment that the statements made by the three are merely part of a deal struck by their relatives to get their sentences reduced.
In other words, the amnesty in Ingushetia too is closer to plea bargaining than conciliation. It in no wise indicates an increase in the number of resistance fighters who have seen the light and want to return to civilian life. Those who have been “amnestied” have in any case been returned to “civilian life” in strict-regime labor camps.
“Do people who wish to avail themselves of the amnesty appeal to you or to the Parliament to mediate?” I ask Mahomet Sali Aushev, a Deputy of the People’s Assembly of Ingushetia and member of the recently created Parliamentary Commission on Violation of Civil Rights.
“No. That doesn’t happen.”
“In your view, is this amnesty going to bring about an improvement in the situation in Ingushetia, in terms of bombings, shelling and armed clashes?”
“This is not a true amnesty, it is simply an appeal for people to lay down arms. A number of people have taken to the forests. Some of them will never turn back from that path. There are, of course, those whom we might call romantics. For any of those who are vacillating this proposal is of course very important, but for the majority, some 90 per cent, the amnesty is an irrelevance. Somebody close to them has been killed, and they are seeking retribution. There is nothing for them to repent of. It is they who are waiting for those who have wronged them to repent. Actually, it seems to me that this ‘amnesty’ was not devised with us in mind. It is intended to have an impact mainly in Chechnya.”
And so to Chechnya, which has a defining role in the region. It is asserted that almost 70 individuals have asked to take advantage of the amnesty, only none of them are fighters. There are a great variety of people who, for a great variety of reasons, have said that they would like to take advantage of Patrushev’s proposal. One baked bread for Dudayev, another once said he sympathised with Maskhadov, a third took food to the forests. The nearest we come to a resistance fighter, whom they are showing on television, used to be in Doku Umarov’s detachment, but on closer inspection even he turns out to have been trading in