“MOPPING UP” INVESTIGATION RESULTS ANNOUNCED.

On September 26, the pro-Moscow chief prosecutor of Chechnya, Vsevolod Chernov, announced that his agency had completed an investigation into the “mopping up operations” which had been conducted by the Russian federal forces in the settlements of Assinovskaya and Sernovodsk on June 3-4 of this year. Fifty-eight inhabitants of the two villages, Chernov reported, had been deemed victims of abuse and four of them had received wounds. The majority of the victims had received material harm. Chernov noted that “the events in Assinovskaya and Sernovodsk had elicited broad social resonance, and he did not exclude that the circumstances of the operations would be a subject of discussion at the session of PACE on [September 27].” Chernov noted that the members of the working group of PACE had been “constantly informed of the process of the investigation into six criminal cases opened in connection with the events in Assinovskaya and Sernovodsk” (NTV.ru, Interfax, September 26).