Novaya Gazeta: 72 rebels were destroyed out of court after giving themselves up in Komsomolskoye in 2000

72 rebels who gave themselves up to the federal forces in the village of Komsomolskoye counting on pardon were in fact destroyed out of court and investigation. Earlier they were considered to be missing. As the Novaya Gazeta newspaper reports, this fact has become known due to a video record made by an officer of the Ministry of Justice. He himself handed the record made in early 2000 to the editors of Novaya Gazeta.

It was known before that the rebels taken prisoners in Komsomolskoye were sent to the investigatory isolation ward in Chernokozovo. Other prisoners who were there at that time witness that at nights, some of them were turned out in the street and ordered to load bodies of dead rebels from Komsomolskoye onto special vehicles for carrying prisoners. The bodies had fresh signs of blows delivered as if with digging tools or plain household spades. Then the bodies were taken away to some place.

The record, shots from which were published by Novaya Gazeta, shows the moment when the amnestied people are being transferred from vehicles with the letters "MJ" (Ministry of Justice) to freight cars. Most of them are jumping out of the vehicles without assistance, but they are in grave physical condition. Some of them are being taken into the street by companions. Almost everybody is injured, there are people without arms and legs, one man's ear is half-cut and dangling. People who died during transportation are being dragged aside so that a pile of dead bodies is growing at a permanent way.