The Sunday Times
April 30, 2006
In the torture cell of Chechnya's tyrant
Mark Franchetti in Grozny
WHEN Akhmed Isayev was taken at gunpoint to a secret detention centre run by
militiamen loyal to Ramzan Kadyrov, the pro-Kremlin strongman of the war-torn
republic of Chechnya, he hoped to be released after only a few hours of rough
questioning.
But the gruesome scene the middle-aged engineer witnessed as he was dragged
into a gym converted into a makeshift torture chamber left no doubt as to
what awaited him.
Six men tied to the walls or gym equipment moaned in agony. They had been
beaten. One was half naked, his chest festering from scorch marks inflicted
with a blowtorch. Another had a broken jaw. All were covered in blood and
bruises. At least two were to be executed, Isayev discovered later.
Isayev’s wrists were handcuffed to the leg of a billiard table in the middle
of the gym. A rope was tied to his ankles then pulled and attached to some
weights, leaving his body stretched on the floor. Six of Kadyrov’s men began
beating him.
“They punched and kicked me in my face and all over my body,” recalled Isayev
(not his real name). “They broke my nose and I lost three teeth. Then they
clubbed me and struck me in the chest with the end of a billiard cue. My face
was covered in blood. Every time I passed out they’d stop for a few minutes
and then start again.
“They attached electric cables to my toes. Then they started giving me
shocks, mild at first and then more and more powerful until the current going
through my body was so strong that I was jumping off the floor. It felt like
all my nerves and muscles were being ripped apart.”
A few hours later, as Isayev lay in anguish handcuffed to a radiator, Kadyrov
— son of former Chechen president Akhmad Kadyrov who was assassinated in May
2004 — appeared surrounded by armed bodyguards. Ginger-haired, bearded and
stocky, he glanced at his men’s latest quarries and approached one of the
prisoners hanging by his wrists.
“He shouted abuse at the man and punched him,” Isayev said. “Then he had the
cables attached to his toes and personally gave him several shocks.”
Isayev, 51, had been abducted to try to force his son Said back to Chechnya.
Said, 26, is a former Islamic rebel who was captured and coerced into working
for Kadyrov, then the republic’s deputy prime minister. But he managed to
flee abroad.
The torture Isayev endured in November 2004 was only the start of his ordeal.
He was held hostage for 311 days and released only when it became clear the
blackmail had failed.
Last month Kadyrov, who enjoys the backing of the Russian president, Vladimir
Putin, was made prime minister of Chechnya. He is expected to become
president soon after he turns 30 — the minimum age under the constitution —
in October. Last year Putin, who is counting on Kadyrov to bring stability to
Chechnya, gave him a Hero of Russia medal, the country’s highest award.
Kadyrov has been widely accused of heading a militia of more than 8,000 men
known as the “Kadyrovtsy”. They are suspected of abducting, torturing and
executing people thought to have links with Islamic rebels opposed to Moscow.
Isayev is one of the few Chechens to have suffered at their hands brave
enough to accuse Kadyrov of personally torturing some of his victims.His
claims have been backed by Memorial, a Russian human rights group with
offices in Chechnya. It says it has corroborated his story by speaking to
other eyewitnesses.
“Considering the evidence we have gathered, we have no doubt that most of the
crimes which are being committed now in Chechnya are the work of Kadyrov’s
men,” said a Memorial investigator. “There is also no doubt in our minds that
Kadyrov has personally taken part in beating and torturing people.
“What they are doing is pure lawlessness. To make matters worse they also go
after people who are innocent, whose names were given by someone being
tortured to death.”
Similar allegations were made last month by the Society of Endangered
Peoples, a respected German group which branded Kadyrov a “war criminal” who
had personally taken part in the torture of civilians.
“He and his henchmen spread fear and terror in Chechnya,” the group said in a
report. “They travel by night as death squads, kidnapping civilians, who are
then locked in a torture chamber, raped and murdered.”
Ismail Mutayev, a suspected rebel currently on trial in Chechnya, has claimed
that multiple burn marks on his body were inflicted by Kadyrov himself.
A keen boxer who owns a pet tiger and invited Mike Tyson, the former world
heavyweight boxing champion, to visit the republic last year, Kadyrov
initially agreed to be interviewed by The Sunday Times, then turned down the
request.
He has vehemently rejected all charges directed at him and his men. He has
also said that missing people are often rebel fighters who have taken to the
mountains. Asked recently by a Russian newspaper about masked men abducting
people in the middle of the night, Kadyrov said: “I have never seen such
men.”
On another occasion he said: “We have made Chechnya the safest place in
Russia” — a strange claim in a place awash with weapons and where abductions
are commonplace. “Soon it will be the safest place in the world,” he added.
“People will come here on holiday. We’ve just got a few more devils to kill
and that will be it.”
After two wars and nearly a decade of violence, more than 200,000 people have
returned to Grozny, the capital, which suffered Europe’s worst bombing since
the second world war.
But guerrilla-style attacks are still launched by Islamic rebels and most
people have come to fear the Kadyrovtsy’s justice more than the 50,000
Russian troops based in the republic.
Kadyrov, who likes to demonstrate his skills at firing rocket-propelled
grenades for the media, has denied claims that his militias run a network of
secret detention camps.
But Isayev said the gym where he was tortured was at a Kadyrovtsy base in
Tsenteroi, Kadyrov’s home village southeast of Grozny. Fields around
Tsenteroi are mined and all access routes are blocked by checkpoints where
visitors, including the bodyguards of Chechen president Alu Alkhanov, are
made to hand in their weapons. In a sign of mounting tension resulting from
Kadyrov’s giddy rise, a gun battle broke out last week between the
president’s and the prime minister’s guards. Two were reported to have died.
Isayev said that during his imprisonment there was a constant flow of new
hostages. “It used to be Chechens against Russians. Now it’s Chechens against
Chechens,” he said.
“The Kremlin has handed the dirty work as well as the whole of Chechnya to
Kadyrov and his thugs. But it won’t end like this. For every single guy they
tortured or killed, one day there will be a bloody vendetta."