'No fools to let witnesses live'

Chechen law enforces have detained people involved in the developments in Borozdinovskaya, President of Chechnya Alu Alkhanov told journalists. He did not specify the number of the arrested and their names, only noted one of them "is a senior district police officer".

RIA Novosti quotes Mr Alkhanov as saying he does not have information about the destiny of the 11 people who disappeared in the course of the 4 July operation in the village of Borozdinovskaya.

Chechen law enforcement agencies do not know the whereabouts and further destiny of the abducted people either.

"Our colleagues from the Chechen prosecutor's office have checked all temporary detention isolators in Chechnya — there are no people from Borozdinovskaya there!" a source at the military prosecutor's office of the Joint Group of Forces in the North Caucasus, which is investigating the abduction case, said to the Caucasian Knot correspondent yesterday. "We think they are most likely dead. Imagine that they are found alive after all this noise and produce evidence where they were and who abducted them — it is a criminal case. No fools to let witnesses live," the man added.

Human rights activists who talked to people in Borozdinovskaya say "almost everyone there holds the abducted people are dead."