Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Russia

Helsinki Group Suspects Secret Prisons In Chechnya

Chechen security forces (file photo) (RFE/RL)

PRAGUE, May 15, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- A Vienna-based rights group is urging Europe's main human rights body to investigate the existence of secret prisons in Chechnya.

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May 15, 2006

In a new 37-page report titled "Unofficial Places of Detention in the Chechen Republic," the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights documents the existence of what it says are secret prisons in Russia's breakaway southern republic.

It alleges that the illegal prisons are operated by Chechen officials and Russian security forces and are used to obtain information and confessions through beatings and torture, and for extrajudicial executions.

The group says it has sent its report to Dick Marty, who is heading a probe into alleged secret CIA detention centers in member states of the Council of Europe.

The Chechnya Conflict

The aftermath of a December 2002 Chechen resistance attack on the main government building in Grozny (epa)

CHRONOLOGY

The fighting in Chechnya has raged, with short breaks, since 1994. It has brought misery, death, and destruction to the North Caucasus republic and to Russia as a whole. View an annotated timeline of the conflict.

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RFE/RL's complete coverage of Russia's war-torn Republic of Chechnya.

Syrians in the northwestern town of Kfar Nubul pose with a cartoon depicting Russia

Angry Over Syria, Arab World Threatens Russian Boycott

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Alla Dzhioyeva attends a protest by her supporters in Tskhinvali on January 28.

South Ossetian Opposition Leader Hospitalized After Raid

Alla Dzhioyeva, the opposition candidate whose victory in a runoff ballot in November for de facto president of Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia was swiftly annulled by the republic's Supreme Court, was taken to a hospital after a raid by some 200 masked security personnel on her headquarters in Tskhinvali. More

Protesters gather behind a banner reading "Honest Elections" during a demonstration in Moscow on February 4.

How To Rig An Election

A whistle-blower in Samara explains how the authorities fixed the Duma elections in December -- and plan to do the same in the presidential vote in March. More