Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [92]
Were there witnesses? There were, and it is they who are today the issue. There were witnesses who survived and have given evidence about the state in which The Cadet dragged Zelimkhan into the October Office’s temporary holding cell. They have told how and by whom, on the morning of January 3, the dying man was dragged out of that cell, after which he vanished without trace.
Rukiyat weeps, “Where is Zelim? Where is my son? Has Lapin said anything? Tell me …” It is already a year and two months later. We are standing by the fence of the offices on Garazhnaya Street of the Prosecutor of the Chechen Republic. We are not being allowed in and the security guards laugh at us and deride us. They make no secret of the fact that they are acting on instructions. We stand directly opposite the windows of Vsevolod Chernov, Prosecutor of Chechnya, and from time to time the cream venetian blinds are moved slightly to one side. The Prosecutor is peeping, wondering what this is all about.
Criminal Case No. 15004 has been opened by the Grozny Prosecutor’s Office only because Zelimkhan’s parents, Rukiyat and Astemir Murdalov, have achieved something seemingly impossible in current Chechen circumstances, in which the law and the law enforcement agencies, including the Prosecutor’s Office, have virtually ceased to function where war crimes are concerned for fear of incurring the wrath of soldiers who have run amok. Rukiyat and Astemir are neither lawyers nor investigators, but they have stood in for the Republic’s entire law enforcement system, selling all their possessions in order to conduct their own investigation and visit all the prisons and pre-trial detention centers of the North Caucasus. Their first priority was to look for their son, alive or dead, but they are also determined that those who took him from them on January 2, 2001 should answer in accordance with the law. In their place, would you want any less?
Alas, it has been precisely with the law enforcement agencies that they have had the greatest difficulty. The Khanties’ immediate superior, Colonel Valeriy Kondakov, the Commanding Officer of the Combined Militia Unit, did his utmost to ensure that his “colleagues” under investigation should be able quietly to slip away from Chechnya back to Siberia. And then what? Then nothing. Although the investigators of the Prosecutor’s Office went to Nizhnevartovsk to arrest the suspects, the Khanties spat in their faces, and the Prosecutor’s Office of Nizhnevartovsk and the senior officials of the provincial militia leaped to the defence of The Cadet and his accomplices. The investigators wiped their faces and left. People who had committed the most heinous crimes continued not merely to enjoy their freedom but even to be employed as officers of the Interior Ministry, as “guardians of the law” on behalf of the state. This continued for one month, a second, a third, six months. One had to wonder whether Russia has a functioning Interior Ministry or some virtual surrogate. A Prosecutor General’s Office? A President? Or were they good only for appearing on television to talk hard-line nonsense?
On September 10, 2001 Novaya gazeta published an article, “The Disappeared,” about the main issue in Chechnya today, the thousands who, having been taken away by the federals, disappear without trace. We told, among others, the story of Zelimkhan Murdalov, and received a prompt reply. It was very much in keeping with a state in which where there are many states. It came not from the Interior Ministry, the Prosecutor-General’s Office or the President, but from The Cadet himself, who clearly considered himself a lord of life. The Cadet was so indignant that he sent threats to the