For the first time in recent years, abducted persons have returned alive.

On Thursday night, the Aushev brothers, residents of the Ingush village of Surkhikhi, who were kidnapped two days ago, were released. This is the first time in recent years that missing Ingush returned home alive. Relatives of the Aushev brothers claim that they were taken to be shot and that their lives were saved by a multi-hour rally in the center of Nazran and the intervention of local authorities.

The rally, which began on Tuesday afternoon, in the center of Nazran, near a railway crossing, lasted until late in the evening and ended in scuffles between local residents and riot police and shooting: enraged women rushed at Ingushetia’s Minister of Internal Affairs, Musa Medov, who had come to see them, shouting “Bring back our sons!” . Stones were thrown towards the police, and in response the police opened fire in the air. By 10 pm on Tuesday, the protesters were blocked - several dozen police cars and armored personnel carriers blocked the road and the railway crossing. “The shooting in the air continued, people began to be pushed back, trying to force them to leave the rally,” Magomed Mutsolgov, head of the human rights organization Mashr, told Kommersant. “Injured people appeared among the protesters and police officers.”

Late at night, the protesters adopted a resolution in which they wrote that “for every drop of blood shed here, Murat Zyazikov and Musa Medov, as well as those who carry out their criminal orders, will bear personal responsibility according to Ingush customs and laws.” After this, they decided to interrupt the meeting until dawn.

The reason for this large-scale protest was the disappearance of the Aushev brothers, residents of the village of Surkhikhi - on the morning of September 18, 25-year-old Magomed Aushev and his 32-year-old namesake cousin were supposed to appear at home, but did not appear even in the evening. Knowing that young people have often disappeared in this region lately, the relatives themselves began searching for the missing.

“My son Magomed went to Astrakhan in August to apply for university,” the abducted man’s father, Maksharip Aushev, told Kommersant. “My nephew Magomed also left with him.” Back in June, the nephew was detained by FSB officers, taken to Vladikavkaz, beaten and mocked, and forced to sign a cooperation agreement. He signed, but as soon as he returned home, he went to the Memorial human rights center and wrote a statement about what happened to him.

And he left for Astrakhan - he needed treatment. On September 17, they bought tickets for the Astrakhan-Grozny train and went home. Therefore, when they did not appear on the 18th, we immediately started looking for them from the Grozny station.

That same evening, the Aushevs’ relatives found a taxi driver who was taking the brothers from the station to Ingushetia. He said that at the exit from the Zavodskoy district of Grozny, his car was blocked by four cars, from which masked people jumped out, transferred taxi passengers to them and took them away in an unknown direction.

“We immediately realized that our son and nephew had been kidnapped,” says Maksharip Aushev. “That same day we raised all our connections, called different people, Ingush and Chechens, among them were officials, police officers and simply authoritative people, and they helped us.” . The head of the Zavodsky District Department of Internal Affairs, the Minister of Internal Affairs of Chechnya - they all began a search. By the way, they said that those who kidnap people here have a roof in Moscow. We announced a reward of 300 thousand rubles for information about our children. At the same time, a large rally gathered in Nazran - the women said that they would not leave there until the children were returned home. I think this rally helped us a lot. Two hours after it ended, their son and nephew were brought to Nazran.

On Thursday night, at half past one, Maksharip Aushev received a call from an acquaintance. “Get in the car and come to Nazran, they are here,” he said.

“This man is authoritative and rich, he was an intermediary, I can’t name him,” said Maksharip. “My son and nephew were transferred in three places - first from a Niva to a UAZ, then from a UAZ to a Zhiguli.” and then one more time - already in the car to this intermediary. They were badly beaten, bruised all over, their ribs were broken and their little fingers were burnt - they were tortured with electric shocks. All their belongings and documents were burned - it felt like they were being prepared for execution. They themselves think so - they say that their captors even argued about who would shoot.

All yesterday the Aushev brothers were in the hospital in Nazran. When relatives ask what their abductors looked like, the brothers answer that they saw no one because they were blindfolded, but they heard “Russian and Chechen speech.”

“In Ingushetia, everyone is sure that this is the work of the secret services,” says human rights activist Mutsolgov. “They are stirring up the situation so that the people will become indignant and stage acts of disobedience - perhaps this is how they want to start a war here.”

However, the President of Ingushetia, Murat Zyazikov, yesterday called the rally a provocation: “I think that it was some kind of preparation, a small performance, considering that (the participants in the action - Kommersant ) already had cauldrons, cups, spoons, pillows, mattresses.” He called the kidnapping itself “an intricate, incomprehensible story.” “There was no written statement from those who said that these people disappeared to the prosecutor’s office,” the President of Ingushetia emphasized, hinting that this story was deliberately used by his enemies fighting for the presidency (about how they reacted Russian TV channels responded to this statement, see “Access to TV” on this page).

Dmitry Kozak, the presidential envoy to the Southern Federal District, also hinted at the ambiguity of this story: “A variety of versions are being considered - from a real abduction to a staged disappearance.” “This abduction, if it happened, was not registered anywhere,” the press service of the Chechen prosecutor’s office confirmed to Kommersant. “That is, no one contacted law enforcement agencies regarding the fact of the abduction.” “A criminal case has not really been opened, the operational services are now conducting an investigation. I can’t say more - we have too little information,” Said Pashayev, deputy head of the Investigative Committee for Chechnya at the Russian Prosecutor’s Office, told Kommersant.

When asked by Kommersant why the relatives did not file a report about the disappearance of the Aushev brothers with law enforcement agencies, Maksharip Aushev replied: “If we had relied on the police and the prosecutor’s office, we would never have seen our children.”

The investigation into the numerous abductions of Ingush people that have been committed in recent years has, in fact, been carried out only by a group led by Lieutenant Colonel Alikhan Kalimatov, seconded from the central office of the FSB. After the group began working in the region in the summer, the kidnappings stopped. Perhaps this is just a coincidence, but the Aushev brothers were kidnapped the day after the murder of officer Kalimatov - on the evening of September 17, as Kommersant reported, unknown persons fired more than 100 shots at his car from two machine guns.

Olga Kommersant-Allenova

The Ingush shouted to the kidnappers