Prisons Remain Deadly Places For Chechen Males

Most male civilians abducted by federal forces in Chechnya are now taken to pits located at military bases, according to a February 5 report by Chechen journalist Murad Magomadov for the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting (available via its website www.iwpr.net). “Few get out alive,” wrote Magomadov, “and those relatives who do manage to extract their loved ones…are reluctant to speak about it.”

Prisons run by the Kadyrov administration, according to Magomadov, include one headed by Ramzan Kadyrov (Akhmad’s son) in the family’s home village of Tsentoroi, and one by the Yamadaev family in Gudermes. Also, wrote Magomadov, there are two camps “in Pobedinskoe and Krasnaya Turbina outside Grozny, run respectively by Kadyrov’s security chief Movladi Baisarov and Russian special forces commander Said-Magomed Kakiev, who is a Chechen.”