Chechens Say Real Horror Began After Battle Ended

As he died, Andi Altimirov, 38, clutched helplessly at a handful of grass and kicked at the ground. Dirt-caked green strands were found locked in his fingers.

It was Buru Altimirov who later pried open his son’s fingers as the younger man lay dead on a riverbank nine days ago in this village in the war-torn republic of Chechnya.

After going to look for the family’s missing cow on Dec. 18, Andi was seized and decapitated on the riverbank, apparently by a group of Russian soldiers. His head was discarded several yards from his body, near the water’s edge.

Altimirov was one of the last victims of a rampage by looting Russian troops in Alkhan-Yurt.

There are 19 names on a list compiled by the New York-based group Human Rights Watch, all of civilians slain in the rampage in the weeks after Dec. 1, when a battle for the town was over, Chechen fighters had left, and Russians were in control.

Many of the victims were killed as they pleaded for mercy, or when they tried to stop soldiers pillaging their homes.

As the battle for the Chechen capital, Grozny, continues, Human Rights Watch has been reconstructing the chain of atrocities in Alkhan-Yurt and has called on the U.N. Security Council to begin an independent investigation. Russian officials say they have found no evidence of wrongdoing.

During the rampage, soldiers hurled grenades into basements where civilians were sheltering, shot and allegedly mutilated people, and burned some of the bodies.

Human Rights Watch staffers have conducted dozens of interviews, and the circumstances of each of the 19 killings have been confirmed by witnesses. What follows is based in part on those accounts.

Andi Altimirov was a firefighter, widely respected in town.

“He was my youngest son. He was the best in the family. All the people in the village came to his funeral. People respected him, even though he was young,” his father recalled in an interview Sunday with Human Rights Watch observer Peter Bouckaert, based in the neighboring republic of Ingushetia, who has been working on the case for several weeks. “He was my best assistant in the house. He was a good son to his father and mother and a good brother.”

When the family cow went missing, Buru Altimirov was going to go and search, but his son went instead. The cow returned sometime later, but Andi never did.

The photograph Buru has to remember his son by shows him proud and strong, dressed in a Soviet army uniform during his military service as a young man.

‘They Killed People Right on the Spot’

Akhmed Dakayev, interviewed by The Times just outside Alkhan-Yurt, described the mass looting.

“The Russians simply forced the doors of the houses that appealed to them,” he said. “They pillaged houses, taking whatever they saw, and they killed people right on the spot who tried to stop them or who objected. They did not talk; they did not ask questions. They just walked into a house, as if it was their own, took things out and killed the hosts, as if it was the only way to shut Chechens up.

“It was a true outrage of lawlessness. All hell broke loose, and no one felt safe in that madness.”

Alkhan-Yurt, a village of 13,000, has the misfortune to stand on a strategically important point, on the Baku-Rostov highway about seven miles south of Grozny. The battle for the village began in early November, as the Russians tried to block Chechen fighters’ last remaining exit route from the capital.

By late November, artillery attacks raged intensely, killing many villagers and destroying many houses. The exact casualties from the shelling are not known.

The Alkhan-Yurt elders, including the local Muslim leader, Wahad Muradov, approached the Chechen fighters, who were in trenches near the cemetery outside the village, and asked them to leave so that the village would face no further attack.

But the fighters refused to go. When Muradov pressed the point, they threatened to shoot him.

After a fierce battle that lasted several days in late November, however, the fighters retreated, and on Dec. 1, Russians entered the village. According to witness reports gathered by Human Rights Watch, the troops operated in groups of about four, moving through the town and throwing grenades into basements where civilians were hiding. Later, they forced many people to walk to a neighboring village, Kulary.

The worst violence and looting in Alkhan-Yurt took place Dec. 2-5. Although more than half the houses had been ruined in the shelling, many more were burned by Russians in the looting.

One of the first victims was Nabits Kornukayeva, a woman aged 100, shot down outside her home Dec. 2 when Russian soldiers came to loot it. The body of her son Arbi, 65, also shot, was found next to hers.

Khamid Khazuyev was the local policeman. On the morning of Dec. 3, neighbors saw an armored personnel carrier and two cars pull up at his house, and 20 minutes later they heard gunshots. After the Russians drove off, their vehicles laden with stolen goods, the neighbors found Khazuyev shot dead in his courtyard.

On the night of Dec. 8, Hanpasha Dudayev, 63, was ill, sheltering in his cellar. A young man was there taking care of him. Russian soldiers entered the basement and tossed a grenade, wounding Dudayev. He started to plead with the soldiers, saying, “I’m an old man, don’t shoot.” The younger man played dead.

The Russians shot Dudayev and then burned his body. After they left, the younger man fled and later told the story to Human Rights Watch.

The same night, Dec. 8, Muradov, the local Muslim leader, and his son Isa were sheltering in their basement. About 11 p.m., Isa went upstairs, but he never returned.

The next morning, Wahad Muradov found his son dead in the courtyard, with his left eye shot, his nose blown off and about 30 shots in his stomach.

Two men in their 30s, Alimpasha Asuyev and Ibragim Usmanov, also were shot to death. Human Rights Watch is trying to confirm reports that they were mutilated with knives.

One witness told Human Rights Watch that he went into Alkhan-Yurt during the first week of looting with an official of the FSB, the main successor to the KGB. When the FSB man tried to prevent the looting, soldiers retorted that they had fought hard for the village and had then been given it to do with as they pleased.

Villagers said the looting soldiers appeared to be contract mercenaries. They also said that Russian casualties in the battle for the village were high, but there are no reliable figures on those numbers, either.

Similar Events in the Previous War

The events in Alkhan-Yurt mirror similar incidents in the earlier war over Chechen independence, from 1994 to 1996--for example, in the town of Samashki, where masked soldiers threw grenades into basements or at groups of civilians and set people on fire. No one was ever prosecuted for the events in Samashki.

Russian authorities have set up an inquiry into the Alkhan-Yurt incidents, but there are widespread doubts about how thorough it will be. Acting Prosecutor Gen. Vladimir Ustinov said Friday that he had no plans to go to the village to investigate. With the inquiry far from complete, he told reporters that there was no evidence of excesses by Russian soldiers.

Ustinov said it is out of the question that the commander of the Russian unit in Alkhan-Yurt could face punishment for what happened.

Most Russian media have ignored the killings in Alkhan-Yurt, although Saturday independent NTV television aired the allegations and footage of soldiers who had looted a truckload of goods. Another television station, RTR, also broadcast the allegations, briefly, on Sunday.

Maj. Gen. Vladimir Shamanov, commander of the western front in Chechnya, said military prosecutors had investigated events in Alkhan-Yurt and found nothing amiss. He dismissed the fuss, saying it was caused by some unscrupulous officials.

“Don’t you dare touch the soldiers and officers of the Russian army. They are doing a sacred thing today--they are defending Russia. And don’t you dare sully the Russian soldier with your dirty hands!” Shamanov said after meeting with Russian journalists at Russian headquarters in Mozdok on Saturday.

But Rachel Denber, a New York-based Human Rights Watch spokeswoman currently in Moscow, said it is crucial that an objective international investigation be carried out because of the poor record of the Russian military in investigating crimes of this nature.

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Times staff writer Dixon reported from Moscow and special correspondent Nunayev from Alkhan-Yurt.