Deserters cut the throats of contract soldiers
Yesterday, in the court of the North Caucasus Military District, where the case of deserters Konstantin Limonov and Ruslan Klochkov, who went over to Chechen militants, was being heard, the main episode of the prosecution was considered - the execution of 16 Russian contract soldiers. With details - ANTON KARMALIN.

At the court hearing, the testimony of Konstantin Limonov, given during the preliminary investigation, was read out. In them he fully admitted his participation in the action. According to the accused Limonov, the execution took place a kilometer from the camp where prisoners were kept in the summer of 1996. That day, the contract soldiers were separated from the rest of the prisoners, informing everyone that they would be exchanged for militants captured by federal forces. Together with the soldiers, a Chechen schoolteacher, who was also a prisoner of the militants, was put in a UAZ van. As defendant Limonov said, this elderly man was the father of the deputy chairman of the KGB department for the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Republic. The prisoners were accompanied by four Chechen guards, as well as defendants Klochkov and Limonov. Having driven away from the camp, the militants stopped the van not far from the already dug hole. Then the nephew of the camp commandant, Movladi Raisov, Dzhambulat, said that the contract soldiers would be liquidated in accordance with martial law. He pulled one soldier out of the car and sat him on the edge of the pit. Then he took out a knife, and turning to his accomplices, said: “It should be done this way.”
He pulled the prisoner's head back by the hair and shouted "Allahu Akbar!" slashed him in the throat while simultaneously kicking him in the back. The soldier with his throat cut fell into a hole. And Dzhambulat ordered the driver to bring two more prisoners.
“Now you,” he said to the guards Limonov and Klochkov. Klochkov was frightened, and Limonov took a knife and, placing the prisoner on the edge of the pit, shouting “Allahu Akbar!” killed him. After that, Klochkov did the same with the second prisoner. Then the prisoners were killed in turn by all the participants in the massacre. The next day, eight more people were executed in the same place. But this time they were simply shot with machine guns.
At the court hearing, Konstantin Limonov refused this testimony, saying that he gave it under pressure from investigator Pavel Redin. However, he was never able to answer the prosecutor’s question about what exactly this pressure was expressed in. And Pavel Redin, who was present in the courtroom as a witness, told the court that on the day the defendant gave this testimony, another investigator conducted the interrogation.
Ruslan Klochkov also denied his participation in the execution of prisoners. Moreover, both defendants claimed that they did not participate in the beatings of prisoners in the camp. However, the testimony of numerous witnesses indicates the opposite. All the victims present in the courtroom, and those who were unable to come to the trial in Rostov, talk about the particular cruelty with which Russian Muslims treated prisoners, highlighting Limonov, who all the time sought to humiliate those who were dependent on him. He beat people with a two-meter stick. One prisoner was hit on the back with it until it broke.
Apparently, it will be possible to prove the looting of Klochkov and Limonov. Thus, from the testimony of one of the victims, it became known that Limonov took his sweatpants, which his mother, who was looking for him, brought him. The militants sent her a letter in which they specifically indicated that she could only pick up her son in civilian clothes. She brought things to Chechnya for her son. Then, when he was finally traded, he was dressed in rags. Limonov stated that this case did not happen. However, witnesses caught him lying.

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 73 dated April 24, 2001, p. 3