Chechens Being Executed, Group Says

Allegations of atrocities by Russian soldiers in Chechnya continued to mount Thursday as a prominent human rights group charged that occupying forces have executed at least 38 civilians--including two children--in Grozny, the separatist republic’s capital.

New York-based Human Rights Watch, which has documented the alleged killings from the reports of refugees who fled Grozny, painted a grim picture of a war-ravaged city where marauding soldiers loot property, burn houses and summarily execute civilians for revenge or for their meager possessions.

The organization has collected evidence of 55 such killings of civilians by Russian forces in Chechnya and is investigating an additional 12 reported killings. In one Grozny case, Human Rights Watch charged, federal troops exterminated the entire 10-member Zubayev family, including sisters aged 8 and 12 and their 68-year-old grandfather.

In a letter to acting Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, the organization urged him to personally oversee an investigation of the alleged killings and bring those who have committed war crimes to justice. The letter was accompanied by the names of the 38 people the group charges were executed in Grozny, as well as statements from witnesses it interviewed in the neighboring Russian republic of Ingushetia.

“President Putin must act on these terrible war crimes committed by Russian soldiers,” said Holly Cartner, executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia division. “The Russian government failed to respond appropriately to earlier reports of summary executions, and now such abuses have happened again.”

Sergei V. Yastrzhembsky, Putin’s spokesman on the Chechen war, said he had “no information” about the alleged killings but contended that such charges were most likely to have originated with the Chechen rebels.

“In most cases they are spread through [Web] sites controlled by Mr. Udugov,” he asserted, referring to the Chechens’ chief ideologist, Movladi Udugov. “Teams of investigators are immediately dispatched to look into these things. But I do not have information that would confirm these statements.”

A posting Thursday on the rebels’ Web site, https://www.kavkaz.com, charged that Russian troops have shot 600 civilians in Grozny since the rebels pulled out of the city last week. The rebels contend that Russian soldiers and officers have engaged in plundering the city and have killed civilians who saw them.

Russian officials say that about 10,000 civilians who survived the massive aerial bombing of Grozny by hiding in basements remain in the ruined city today. The authorities have highlighted the army’s efforts to set up soup kitchens to feed the local people.

Col. Alexander M. Tolmachyov, a senior military journalist with the North Caucasus military district headquarters, said it is possible that civilians were shot during the fighting, but he argued that that doesn’t constitute a pattern of behavior by Russian troops.

“It is enough to take one look at the smoking ruins of Grozny to realize that almost anything could happen to those thousands of peaceful residents who couldn’t leave Grozny in time,” he said. “In a situation where both rebels and families of peaceful and helpless civilians hide in basements and holes in the ground, I wouldn’t rule out that in the heat and rage of the battle some peaceful residents could have been shot.”

The Human Rights Watch report is based on the accounts of more than a dozen witnesses, nearly all of whom were interviewed separately and at great length, the group said. Witnesses who said they had been shot or burned by Russian soldiers had wounds consistent with their accounts, it said.

“Their testimonies were consistent, credible and mutually confirming,” Cartner wrote in the letter to Putin. “In most instances, Human Rights Watch was able to interview witnesses who personally saw Russian forces execute the civilians, or who had convincing information placing Russian soldiers at the scene of the crimes.”

Human Rights Watch said two witnesses provided this account of the killing of the Zubayev family:

The family was among a group of people hiding in a cellar when Russian soldiers arrived and checked their documents. After the soldiers left, the family patriarch, Said Zubayev, 68, said he was returning home. “The Russians have come; now we are free. Let us go home,” one witness recalled him saying.

Zubayev left by himself. An hour or two later, his wife and a daughter decided to follow Zubayev and found him lying in the street, shot dead. The witnesses said they heard screams, ran to the scene and helped the women carry the body home. At the time, the area was under Russian control.

The following morning, the two witnesses went to the Zubayev home and found eight bodies in the yard.

“What I saw was awful,” one witness said. “All the members of the family were shot. Judging from the bullet casings, they were shot from a heavy submachine gun. The house was still smoking--it had been burned. . . . There were tracks of an armored personnel carrier in the yard. . . . The house had been looted and the family had been killed.”

One of the victims was 12-year-old Larisa Zubayev. The body of 8-year-old Eliza Zubayev was never found, and the witnesses said they believe her body may have been burned in the house.

In December, Human Rights Watch alleged in a similar report that Russian troops had summarily executed 17 civilians in the town of Alkhan-Yurt, just south of Grozny. The soldiers engaged in widespread looting and rape and burned down many of the homes in the town, the organization charged.