russian-chechen terror

Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow
Thursday April 17, 2003
The Guardian

The bodies of three schoolboys were discovered yesterday in Chechnya, two days after they were reported missing.
Brothers Arsen and Timur Makhtiyev, aged 15 and 16, and Alexander Galichenko, were reported by the Chechen interior ministry to have gone to school in the village of Michurin on Monday morning, but failed to return home.

There was no further information about the suspected motive for the murders.

The tragic find comes days after Chechen officials leaked reports which highlighted the extent of disappearances in the republic. In these documents, the local prosecutor reports that 738 people disappeared in 2002 alone. In the first two months of this year, 70 people were murdered, 126 were abducted and 19 were reported missing. The fragments of 52 bodies were found.

Teenagers and young men are often targeted by Russian troops in operations against "terrorists". They are also often caught up in Chechen separatist and criminal activity.

Memorial, a Russian human rights group which also chronicled the devastation caused by the Stalinist terror, reports that the present murder rate among Chechens is 46 for every 10,000 people, while across all of Russia during the height of the Stalinist purges in 1937 and 1938 it was 44.

Meanwhile, the authorities have discovered an unprotected cache of radioactive material on the grounds of a ruined chemical plant in the capital Grozny, a news agency reported yesterday. The plant's director said two teenagers had died of radiation poisoning after stealing a container of the material.

The material was found in a workshop at the Rodon plant in Grozny's Zavodskoi district, the director, Ziva Kadyrov, told the Interfax news agency.

Mr Kadyrov did not identify the substance, but said it had been kept in 17 containers. A group of teenagers from a nearby village stole one container and two of the youths later died from radiation poisoning. He did not say when the deaths had take place or whether the container was recovered, but said the plant was now under heavy guard and workers would dispose of the material.

The find comes amid continuing concern about the security of Russia's nuclear materials and fears that Chechen rebels could acquire them for use in terrorist attacks.

Mr Kadyrov said the Rodon plant had disposed of 80 containers of radioactive material since 2000, either by burying them or transferring them to safe storage outside Chechnya. But 12 radioactive "sources" were missing in Chechnya, including some from a university in Grozny, he warned.