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Abductee Said to Be Slain Rebel’s Wife

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Times Staff Writer

Human rights activists expressed concern Thursday about a kidnapped Chechen journalist as information emerged that she was apparently married to a separatist leader killed in an explosion last month.

Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based group that campaigns for journalists’ rights, said in a statement that Elina Ersenoyeva and her aunt had been abducted by gunmen on Aug. 17. The captors released the aunt a few hours later but were thought to be still holding the journalist, the statement said. The group called for a stepped-up effort to free Ersenoyeva.

Tatyana Lokshina, an expert with the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, said in Moscow that reports that Ersenoyeva was married to guerrilla leader Shamil Basayev appeared to be true.

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“I got to know that Ersenoyeva was married to Basayev from the statement of the Chechen Council of Nongovernmental Organizations,” which came Wednesday, Lokshina said. “I didn’t know her personally. But now I am almost sure that she was indeed married to Basayev.”

She added, “It is obvious that her connections to Basayev triggered” the kidnapping.

Basayev died last month when a truck carrying explosives blew up in the Russian republic of Ingushetia, which borders Chechnya. Russian security forces took credit for his death, but it remained unclear whether the blast was intentional.

The guerrilla leader, labeled by Russian authorities as the country’s most wanted criminal, claimed responsibility for attacks that killed hundreds of Russian civilians over the last decade, including the 2004 assault on a school in the Russian town of Beslan. He considered civilians legitimate targets because they supported Moscow’s war against separatists in the republic of Chechnya.

Lokshina, who also heads the Moscow-based Demos human rights center, said that under the Russian Constitution, Ersenoyeva had “all the rights of other Russian citizens.”

“But in practice, rebels’ relatives in Chechnya are extremely vulnerable,” she said. “It is hard to say whether she will be released. I hope for the better for her.”

Reporters Without Borders called for an “immediate and massive” effort by the Chechen and Russian governments to help free Ersenoyeva. It also said that two days before her abduction, the 26-year-old journalist wrote to the Helsinki federation claiming that she and members of her family were being harassed by security personnel working for Ramzan Kadyrov, prime minister of the Russian-backed Chechen government.

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The Chechen Council of Nongovernmental Organizations website, which first reported that Ersenoyeva was married to Basayev, said law enforcement officials thought the guerrilla leader had controlled as much as $7 million. It said Ersenoyeva’s abductors apparently had seized her in an effort to find the money.

The website reported that Ersenoyeva’s relatives said law enforcement agencies knew she was Basayev’s wife. Authorities think she knows where the money is, the website said.

The Chechen Interior Ministry media service said it had no information about Ersenoyeva’s abduction, the Russian news agency Interfax reported.

Three human rights organizations, including Demos and the Helsinki federation, detailed Ersenoyeva’s background and the abduction in an open letter to Chechnya’s prosecutor last week. The letter identified Ersenoyeva as an employee of a local nongovernmental organization and a correspondent for the Chechen Society newspaper.

Ersenoyeva and her aunt were kidnapped on a main street in Grozny, the Chechen capital, by several men in camouflage uniforms and masks who forced them into two cars, the letter said. Bags were placed over their heads, and they were driven to an unknown location and taken to a basement. A short time later, the aunt, her head still covered, was forced into a car and released on a Grozny street, the letter said.

The human rights groups also quoted from a letter that Ersenoyeva reportedly wrote before her abduction, in which she said she was being persecuted by the Chechen security force run by the prime minister.

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The force, known as the Kadyrovtsy and made up largely of former rebels granted amnesty for switching sides, has been accused by human rights activists of using kidnappings, killings and torture to cement Kadyrov’s rule.

In her letter, Ersenoyeva did not mention Basayev by name but said she had married a rebel in November who died recently.

“Those people have been threatening us nonstop for months already,” she wrote.

“My husband was killed over a month ago but the persecutions haven’t ended -- in fact, they’ve grown even worse. The enforcement agencies are threatening us with violence and death because my late husband was a rebel.”

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