Deadly performance boosting

The bodies of six people in military uniforms with marks of gunshot wounds were found on the outskirts of Kurchaloi in Chechnya last week, local residents told the Information Centre of the Council of Nongovernmental Organisations. They said the dead bodies were brought away by local internal affairs personnel and very soon buried. No identification procedures were carried out and all the bodies were buried in black polyethylene bags. The locals believe the hasty burial gives evidence those may not have been rebels, but usual civilians seized earlier and then killed and dressed in camouflage uniforms to be shown as destroyed rebels.

There were similar cases before. Law enforcement agents abducted three young men in Gudermes more than a week ago, according to the Council of Nongovernmental Organisations. Three days ago their dead bodies in camouflage uniforms and with marks of gunshot wounds were left near the houses from which they had been brought away. Local residents believe the killed young men are most likely to have been declared destroyed rebels.

A combat between local law enforcement personnel and a group of rebels occurred near Ishkhoi-Yurt, Gudermes district, on 12 May, which led to several law enforcement agents killed and wounded. The next day law enforcement officers brought two young men to the scene, dressed them in camouflage uniforms and shot them dead, according to local residents. There is information the killed men were declared destroyed gang members. In the second half of the same day, their bodies were delivered to the Gudermes District Division of Internal Affairs. Khozh-Baudi Borkhajiev, a local newspaper editor, identified one of the killed "rebels" as his nephew, Ilman Khadisov, b. 1982, brought away by Chechen security service officers from his home in Gudermes in late March. The officers then gave assurances they would only interrogate the young man and let him go at once. However, his relatives had not heard from him since then. There were marks of severe torture on Ilman Khadisov's body, according to eyewitness accounts.

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