Chechen SAM starts receiving relatives of warfare victims

The residents of Chechnya, who are searching for their missing relatives among those, whose remains were brought to Grozny on December 31, 2016, are now being received at the Spiritual Administration of Muslims (SAM, or Muftiate) of Chechnya. On the first day, January 9, several dozens of relatives of the persons missing since the first and second Chechen military campaign came to the Muftiate.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on December 31, 2016, remains of 109 persons, killed, presumably, during the first Chechen military campaign were brought to Rostov. They had been buried into two mass graves in a cemetery in the Grozny District. The Muftiate said that in case of identification of the deceased, their relatives will be able to take the remains for burial.

The spokesman of the Chechen SAM said that many people have wrong information about the buried remains.

"Many people believe, for some reason, that we have a list of people, even though we only have DNA codes," he said, adding that many visitors have no "genetic passports". They are issued to relatives of missing residents of Chechnya since spring of 2013.

Relatives of the missing people are unhappy with the organization of identification procedure of the remains, and complain about the lack of information about kidnapped persons and places of burial.

A former employee of the republic's Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) named Akhmad believes that the Chechen authorities have once again "demonstrated their real attitude to their people."

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.