About the corpse report

Members of the Presidential Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights held a press conference at Interfax on some of the topics discussed at a recent meeting with Dmitry Medvedev in Nalchik. Most of the attention following the meeting was focused on the case of Sergei Magnitsky, but this time human rights activists wanted to talk about other topics relating, in particular, to civil participation in countering terrorism and civil participation in the formation of interethnic and interfaith harmony. According to Council member and head of the Civil Harmony Committee Svetlana Gannushkina, after her meeting with the president she had the feeling that human rights activists were not fully understood. She spoke with Medvedev about the policy of “reporting with corpses” - a well-known practice when a militant killed in the North Caucasus is presented as a suspect (or even as definitely guilty) of some terrorist act or crime, and that’s where the whole investigation story ends. But we shouldn't just talk about militants.

Gannushkina gave a blatant example of human rights violations in the North Caucasus, which she had to face after her meeting with the president. It was about the kidnapping of Dagestan resident Shamil Omarov on May 28. In response to a request from the Council and “Civil Harmony” in connection with the statement of the abducted man’s father, Zelimkhan Omarov, responses were received at intervals of several days from the prosecutor’s office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Dagestan (these documents were dated at the end of June). In an illiterately written statement from the department of internal affairs, from which it is impossible to understand whether they registered the father’s appeal in the journal or the abduction itself, it is said that “Shamil Zelimkhanovich Omarov, born in 1980, who was kidnapped on May 28, 2011, was destroyed on June 3, 2011 in the city of Gudermes, Chechen Republic in during the special operation by security forces.” These monstrous words, as Gannushkina notes (and we cannot but agree with her), are not accompanied by any explanations: for example, why a person kidnapped in Dagestan ended up in Chechnya - not to mention why he became a victim of a special operation by security forces. Not a word is said that an investigation is being carried out into the fact of the theft (and/or destruction). The response from the prosecutor's office says that a criminal case has been opened into the kidnapping, that the fact of the kidnapping by unknown masked men in cars with weapons has been established - it is described in exactly the same words as in the statement of Omarov Sr., that investigative actions have been carried out and that the course of the investigation has been taken over by the prosecutor's office for control. Another question arises: how come the prosecutor’s office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the republic, while dealing with the same case, do not know about each other’s actions?

Thus, Gannushkina emphasized that, according to her assumptions, those abducted in one republic are transferred to another, which reports the corpses. “The first republic that reports corpses is the Chechen Republic,” said the human rights activist. She noted that they can always object to this: they say that it is the relatives of the militants who report the kidnapping, because this is how they cover them up. However, in the case of Shamil Omarov, the prosecutor's office, apparently based on the results of interviewing witnesses, came to the conclusion that the kidnapping actually took place.

In connection with the ongoing crimes, human rights activists propose to create in each subject of the federation included in the North Caucasus Federal District a permanent meeting of heads of security and law enforcement agencies with the participation of representatives of human rights organizations and under the leadership of the heads of the subjects. Gannushkina emphasized that we are not talking about creating a public council, that is, a new structure, but about regular meetings of authorized persons in the presence of representatives of the public in order to discuss specific cases and actions of specific structures.