SEPARATISTS COMMENT ON RAMZAN’S ALLEGATIONS

The separatist Chechenpress news agency on February 22 ran a commentary on the remarks Ramzan Kadyrov made during his meeting with U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour. “It has long been known to psychiatrists that for patients suffering from manic delusions, the most desired surprise is a new interlocutor,” the commentary read. “Kadyrov Jr. was doubly lucky. A new interlocutor, and, what is more, a woman…The acting ‘premier’ of the Chechen Republic (I wonder, did he also receive Louise Arbour in a tracksuit?) announced to his guest that he had finally found the murderer of his father. More precisely, the person who ordered the murder. According to Kadyrov’s version, it’s Akhmed Zakaev, who received political asylum in Great Britain and is currently a resident of London. Kadyrov said that the million dollars paid for the murder were transferred through Zakaev to those who carried out the terrorist act.”

Noting what Kadyrov had to say about Boris Berezovsky, Chechenpress commented: “In Kadyrov’s delusions, the disgraced oligarch appears as…the historical figure who stirred up all the military trouble in the North Caucasus at the start of the 1990s. Kadyrov whispered in the ear of the lofty Western guest [Arbour] that, according to information from ‘well-informed sources,’ Berezovsky over many years financed Chechen ‘militants’ by means of an extremely cruel and criminal scheme. Berezovsky supposedly proposed to the ‘militants’ that they kidnap peaceful citizens and Russian citizens and that he would ransom the abducted people for tidy sums….”

The Chechenpress commentary continued: “Having heard plenty of the Kremlin protégé’s ‘secret material,’ Louise Arbour asked him a reasonable question: How can he explain the hundreds of cases of civilians kidnapped in Chechnya in the current period? Also, why are human rights organizations and international institutions continually receiving numerous reports of arbitrary actions by the pro-Moscow ‘security forces’ [and] of confessions received from innocent people through the use of torture and psychological pressure? How Kadyrov answered this is, thus far, not known to the wider public.”