Russians and Chechens - brothers forever? The publishing house "Nauka" publishes a collection of articles "Chechens in the history, politics, science and culture of Russia" with a circulation of three thousand copies. The book was in a hurry to publish by June 12 - the Day of Russia. “We, Chechens, are actively integrating into the Russian Federation today, establishing mutually beneficial cooperation with other subjects, strengthening our friendship with other peoples,” Dukvakha Abdurakhmanov, chairman of the People’s Assembly of the republic’s parliament, said in an address to the residents of the republic. About what it's like to be a Chechen in modern Russia and how their "integration" goes, using the example of one family, The New Times researched
The Mukhadiev brothers are local Elektrogorsk celebrities. They were shown several times on central television. Even after the terrorist attack in Tushino, Boris Gryzlov, then Interior Minister, even mentioned them. He said that a terrorist network consisting of three Chechens had been uncovered in Elektrogorsk near Moscow, and that a special operation had been carried out to detain them.
“They have not left us behind, they will never leave us,” begins Akhmed, the eldest of the Mukhadiev brothers. He is 41 years old, of the three of them he sat longer and longer. He seems to be talking about something serious, but somehow everything is with a half smile. For a long time he does not dare to smoke. A few hours later, he takes out a cigarette and smokes without ceasing. “A few days ago, I had to hit a guy a couple of times, right in our apartment,” he says. - Some kind of goose is knocking at our house and asks: is there “white” or “pepper”? Means drugs. It is immediately clear that he is not asking for himself, since it does not matter to him what exactly interests him. And I told him: who sent you here, speak! Why did you decide that you can buy drugs from us at home?
“Such people come to us all the time, more often they want to buy weapons, barrels, explosives,” says 37-year-old Bislan Mukhadiyev.
“When I ask who sent it,” Ahmed continues, “they answer: they came themselves, we know that you,“ Czechs ”, can do anything. And I told them all: go to Chechnya or to the Tula Arms Plant, you will definitely find it there. Recently, I accidentally met one operative (he lives next door to us) on the street and said: “Seryoga, stop sending people to us, we’re already tired of it.”
Blown in by the whirlwind
In the apartment that the brothers rent in the city of Elektrogorsk, Moscow Region, the entrance doors are periodically changed. “Now we don’t even remember how many times the UBOP members stormed our apartment,” says Akhmed. - They get drunk, sit in their "loaf" (UAZ) and go "waving". If we have time, we open the door so that they don’t break it out and don’t have to re-insert it. But in general, we usually jump out the windows - we live on the ground floor.
Another brother, Ramzan, after one of the "imprisonments" in 2003, began to lose his sight. It was in that year that the "Whirlwind-anti-terror" swept through their Elektrogorsk apartment (Gryzlov publicly reported on this case). Ubopovtsy broke into the house. Bulletproof vests, helmets, machine guns. “I then asked them not to break the door. He said I'll open it. They immediately put me in the corridor,” Bislan recalls. Boxes of TNT and electric detonators were taken out of the apartment that morning. “They themselves brought everything. For a long time they rummaged around the rooms, did not know where to put them. They shoved for the wardrobe - it didn’t fit. And we lie down and watch,” Ahmed says. - I was taken away from the brothers to Pavlovsky Posad, put in an Orthodox church, chained to a battery. They also ask: don't icons bother you too much? I say: no, they don’t bother you, it’s you atheists.” After the Mukhadiyevs were taken, almost the next day the director of one of the local schools organized a line at which he qualitatively explained to the students that Chechen terrorists live in their city.
Ahmed and the younger Ramzan spent 9 months in a pre-trial detention center, after which a trial was held, where the brothers were found guilty of possession of explosives, sentenced to the same 9 months and released from the courtroom. The Chechens were then defended by lawyers from the International Protection Assistance Center. Lawyer Ksenia Kostromina recalls: “It was quite obvious that they were not guilty. Even when they were detained, a protocol of administrative detention was drawn up, they were sentenced by the court to 10 days of administrative arrest, allegedly simply for disobeying the lawful demands of the police. And only then suddenly a criminal case arose. 1 . “Chechens cannot be justified,” the brothers explain to themselves.
There is still a lot of uncertainty in this case, the investigators were confused in the testimony, the search was carried out under the pretext of checking the registration records, and not within the framework of any specific criminal case. Perhaps that is why none of the top leaders of the state preferred to remember the disclosure of the “terrorist gang of the Mukhadievs”.
An extra reason
“The worst thing about all these seats is that it’s almost impossible to pray there,” Ahmed says. “I am a deeply religious person. And in the cells, bottles and mugs were specially taken away so that they could not get water. We do ablution before prayer. I got up, prayed, and they would look through the peephole and say: stop it, turn your face to us. Well, there were Russian guys there. They tell the guard: don't you see, the man is praying, he needs no more than 5 minutes. He: No, it's not allowed. The guys chatted him up, and I had time to complete the prayer.”
“This is an eternal problem among imprisoned Muslims in Russia,” said Elena Ryabinina, a member of the Civic Assistance Committee. “And if any of the prescribed five prayers falls on the time after lights out or before getting up, this is a separate reason for penalties” (see in the margins). Oleg Orlov, director of the Human Rights Center Memorial, clarifies: “When it comes to Chechens or Ingush, it is practically impossible for them to perform prayers there. If they do this, then at best they end up in a punishment cell, at worst, their corpses are already taken out.” “This is the first time we hear about this problem,” the press service of the Federal Penitentiary Service told The New Times. - Of course, there is an internal daily routine of the institution, it also applies to Muslims. The logic here is like in the army. At the time when this is permitted, the convicted or under investigation may perform their rites. But even if a person, while praying, violated the routine, he is not punished immediately. First, they will warn him, explain that this is not possible. In a pre-trial detention center, with the permission of the investigation, a person can be taken to prayer rooms. And for someone to take the bottles away or beat them, they didn’t hear that. ”
Preventive measures
The Mukhadiyevs did not get to the corpses. When they were released, they continued to engage in their petty commerce: they sold watermelons, melons, onions, grown by relatives in the Stavropol Territory, to Azerbaijanis at the wholesale market. Until August 29 last year, they went to the police to renew the registration. From Elektrogorsk they were then sent to the criminal investigation department of Pavlovsky Posad. And instead of a seal on registration - taking fingerprints, drawing up a protocol, describing appearance and clothes 2 . As a result - the detention and administrative case for disobedience to the lawful order of a police officer. 3 According to the documents, it turned out that each of the brothers, “having entered the office of Grunin P.V., in a rude obscene form demanded that he be registered in the city of Pavlovsky Posad.” The Deputy Head of the Criminal Investigation Department, Colonel Pavel Grunin 4 I was in Chechnya seven times, fought just in the Argun region, from where the Mukhadiev family arrived back in the early 90s. “Grunin asked me to take off my pants,” Bislan recalls. - I wanted to demonstrate to the operatives that Wahhabis do not wear underwear. I had to drop my trousers, I had underwear on. The Colonel was clearly disappointed." The next day after the arrest, the lawyer of the "Civil Assistance" Abu Gaytaev arrived in the city. A Chechen by nationality, he himself almost fell under the distribution: “When Grunin realized that I was also a Chechen, he began to bully. True, then he calmed down. They deprived the Mukhadiyevs of the right to defense. When their case was supposed to be considered, I was deceived, sent to another judicial district. So I stood on the street while the trial was going on.
“Now, in fact, the excitement about catching Chechens, which was 3-4 years ago, has actually subsided,” continues Abu Gaitaev. - Then anyone could throw anything on the street. But, despite outward calmness, the attitude towards the Chechens remained the same, negative, wrong. If he gets into the police for some nonsense, a very serious case can grow out of this trifle. Almost every police department has people who served in Chechnya. I myself, because of my nationality, how many times almost got into a fight, but I'm still a lawyer.
“Yes, 3-4 years ago we had unspoken plans, how many Chechens to detain, what can be hung on them,” one of the policemen from the Moscow region says in an interview with The New Times. - Now it has become easier with this, but if you suddenly caught a Chechen, then this is cool, or something. I remember the words of General Mikhail Barsukov: a Chechen is either a murderer, or a bandit, or a thief.”
The Mukhadiev brothers remember Barsukov's quote. And then they quote Pushkin. “Humble up, Caucasus, Yermolov is coming ...” The elder Akhmed again lights up, reads for a long time and by heart, however, instead of “humble up” he says “strengthen”.
From the letters of Muslim prisoners: “I was forbidden to practice my religion, Islam, spread religious beliefs and act in accordance with them. From the side of operational officers there were constant threats to my life and health, “if I don’t stop practicing my religion,” they said, “then “you won’t get out of here alive.” “I believe that the failure to provide the opportunity to observe religious duties on the grounds that by praying during lights-out I violate the internal rules of the correctional institution is a violation of my constitutional rights.”
From the report of the Memorial Center “On the situation of the inhabitants of Chechnya in the Russian Federation” (2007): “But the main problem, of course, is the danger to life that everyone who returns to Chechnya after a sufficiently long absence faces. All of them, especially young men, immediately fall under suspicion that during their absence they were in the mountains and participated in illegal armed groups. Charges of terrorism, which are fabricated with extraordinary ease, may well fall on those who just came to exchange a passport. “A serious problem for immigrants from Chechnya remains obtaining internal passports of citizens of the Russian Federation ... local bodies of the Russian Federal Migration Service refuse to issue passports to Chechens and demand that they go to Chechnya for documents.”
_____________ 1Bislan Mukhadiev was released exactly 10 days after his arrest. As he explains himself, he was asked to bring a ransom of $15,000 each.
2 By the way, as follows from the report of the Memorial Center “On the situation of Chechen residents in the Russian Federation”, “in many cases, when registering, Chechens are fingerprinted, photographed in full face and profile - that is, they are considered as potential criminals.” On August 31, 2007, the court sentenced him to five days of administrative arrest. The decision was later appealed by a lawyer. “Now we are preparing to file a claim for moral damages,” said lawyer Abu Gaitaev. 4 According to some sources, P.V. Grunin was again sent to Chechnya with a combined police detachment.
Nationality as a sentence • New Times • RIMA — Russian Independent Media Archive
