Preacherman
Member
I've said for a long time that the Central Asian provinces of Russia and the former Soviet Union would produce the next wave of Muslim extremist terrorism to spread into Europe and the USA. From this article, it looks like that day is not too far away... Sobering stuff!
From the Telegraph, London (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai...21.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/05/21/ixworld.html):
Russia's 'war on terror' tainted by brutality and corruption
By Julius Strauss in Nalchik
(Filed: 21/05/2005)
The Russian policemen who threw the battered body of Rasul Tsakoyev on to a rubbish dump at the edge of his village must have thought he would be dead within hours.
The 26-year-old had been beaten so badly that he was barely conscious, his major organs were failing and he had massive internal bleeding from repeated punches, kicks and blows from a baton.
But after the two policemen left, Rasul, an athlete who ran a small mobile telephone business in the southern Russian city of Nalchik, clambered to his feet and staggered the two miles home.
When he arrived his body and face were so swollen that at first his parents didn't recognise him.
''He was always so tall and thin and stood so erect," his mother, Zukhra said. "But when he stood at the door his whole body was bloated and he was bent almost double from the beatings.
''That night he told me everything. How they drugged him, ran electric currents through his body, put out cigarettes on his neck and broke needles under his fingernails."
Rasul was taken to hospital where he slipped into a coma. Within a week he was dead. The post-mortem examination blamed his death on internal haemorrhaging and damage to his major organs.
To the West, President Vladimir Putin presents the face of a staunch partner in the war on radical Islam, waging a legitimate fight against extremists in the south of his country.
As evidence of what he is up against he cites the brutal seizure of the school in Beslan last year, the downing of two Russian airliners by Chechen suicide bombers and numerous other attacks that the Kremlin regards as terrorism pure and simple.
But even as he stands shoulder-to-shoulder with western leaders abroad, at home his men are conducting a dirty and brutal war against innocent civilians that, far from combating terrorism, is driving them into the hands of a tiny minority of radicals.
The effect of these policies has been to bring the entire Russian Caucasus to boiling point and create an extremist threat in regions that have no history of militant Islam.
Republics such as Dagestan, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachayevo-Cherkessiya may have so far avoided the international limelight even as Chechnya has become a byword for brutality and terror.
But analysts believe each of them is now on the brink of escalating into a conflict that could sweep through the whole region.
Alexei Malashenko, an expert on Islam with the Carnegie Centre in Moscow, said: "The entire Caucasus is ready to explode."
Nalchik, the capital of the small Muslim-dominated republic of Kabardino-Balkaria and the place where Ruslan was born and raised, was until recently a peaceful provincial backwater.
But now, egged on by a Kremlin that will brook no dissent, local security forces are running amok and terrorising the entire population with impunity.
In the vanguard of this new wave of Soviet-style oppression is the local branch of the notorious organised crime squad, known by its Russian acronym UBOP.
It was UBOP officers who beat Rasul to death because he refused to sign a document implicating himself in terrorist activities. His only known crime was to have once met a man who allegedly went on to become an Islamic radical.
At one stage during Rasul's torture he was even hauled, semi-conscious, in front of Anatoly Kyarov, the acting head of the regional UBOP. "Has he signed?" Kyarov asked, according to Rasul. When they answered no, he told the men beating him: "Continue with him then."
Arriving in today's Nalchik is akin to stepping back in time to when Soviet paranoia was at its height.
During a visit last week we were continuously followed by car loads of government security men.
A local reporter told us how she was punished by having cigarettes stubbed out on her fingers after helping a German journalist last year.
In the early 1990s, when the Iron Curtain fell, a handful of teachers from the Middle East arrived in the capital Nalchik to promote their interpretations of Islam.
Some locals even travelled to the Gulf States to continue studying.
A few hotheads reportedly joined Chechen fighters who were taking on the Russians in the hills. But trouble only began last year when local authorities shut down all the mosques in the city bar one.
Zaur, 30, who witnessed the crackdown, said: "They came straight in with dogs and with their boots on.
''We were all dragged off to the police station.
''I was made to lie on the floor of a police truck and beaten with fists and batons."
After the attack in Beslan last year the anti-Islamic campaign in Nalchik increased. Hundreds were detained and tortured.
Valeri Khatazhuro, the city's human rights ombudsman, said: "The men they arrested were held in cells and beaten.
''They were forced to shave each other's beards off with rusty nails. Crosses were cut into their heads."
Next the local authorities issued a "blacklist" of alleged Islamic militants with nearly 400 names on it.
The whole exercise was used as an excuse to settle political scores and extort bribes.
One local explained how the list was compiled.
First police were sent to the mosques where they wrote down the names of young men. Then commanders scratched off the names of friends and relatives. Those who had rich parents were approached with a view to extorting bribes to get their names removed.
The remainder were officially proclaimed to be terror suspects.
From the Telegraph, London (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai...21.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/05/21/ixworld.html):
Russia's 'war on terror' tainted by brutality and corruption
By Julius Strauss in Nalchik
(Filed: 21/05/2005)
The Russian policemen who threw the battered body of Rasul Tsakoyev on to a rubbish dump at the edge of his village must have thought he would be dead within hours.
The 26-year-old had been beaten so badly that he was barely conscious, his major organs were failing and he had massive internal bleeding from repeated punches, kicks and blows from a baton.
But after the two policemen left, Rasul, an athlete who ran a small mobile telephone business in the southern Russian city of Nalchik, clambered to his feet and staggered the two miles home.
When he arrived his body and face were so swollen that at first his parents didn't recognise him.
''He was always so tall and thin and stood so erect," his mother, Zukhra said. "But when he stood at the door his whole body was bloated and he was bent almost double from the beatings.
''That night he told me everything. How they drugged him, ran electric currents through his body, put out cigarettes on his neck and broke needles under his fingernails."
Rasul was taken to hospital where he slipped into a coma. Within a week he was dead. The post-mortem examination blamed his death on internal haemorrhaging and damage to his major organs.
To the West, President Vladimir Putin presents the face of a staunch partner in the war on radical Islam, waging a legitimate fight against extremists in the south of his country.
As evidence of what he is up against he cites the brutal seizure of the school in Beslan last year, the downing of two Russian airliners by Chechen suicide bombers and numerous other attacks that the Kremlin regards as terrorism pure and simple.
But even as he stands shoulder-to-shoulder with western leaders abroad, at home his men are conducting a dirty and brutal war against innocent civilians that, far from combating terrorism, is driving them into the hands of a tiny minority of radicals.
The effect of these policies has been to bring the entire Russian Caucasus to boiling point and create an extremist threat in regions that have no history of militant Islam.
Republics such as Dagestan, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachayevo-Cherkessiya may have so far avoided the international limelight even as Chechnya has become a byword for brutality and terror.
But analysts believe each of them is now on the brink of escalating into a conflict that could sweep through the whole region.
Alexei Malashenko, an expert on Islam with the Carnegie Centre in Moscow, said: "The entire Caucasus is ready to explode."
Nalchik, the capital of the small Muslim-dominated republic of Kabardino-Balkaria and the place where Ruslan was born and raised, was until recently a peaceful provincial backwater.
But now, egged on by a Kremlin that will brook no dissent, local security forces are running amok and terrorising the entire population with impunity.
In the vanguard of this new wave of Soviet-style oppression is the local branch of the notorious organised crime squad, known by its Russian acronym UBOP.
It was UBOP officers who beat Rasul to death because he refused to sign a document implicating himself in terrorist activities. His only known crime was to have once met a man who allegedly went on to become an Islamic radical.
At one stage during Rasul's torture he was even hauled, semi-conscious, in front of Anatoly Kyarov, the acting head of the regional UBOP. "Has he signed?" Kyarov asked, according to Rasul. When they answered no, he told the men beating him: "Continue with him then."
Arriving in today's Nalchik is akin to stepping back in time to when Soviet paranoia was at its height.
During a visit last week we were continuously followed by car loads of government security men.
A local reporter told us how she was punished by having cigarettes stubbed out on her fingers after helping a German journalist last year.
In the early 1990s, when the Iron Curtain fell, a handful of teachers from the Middle East arrived in the capital Nalchik to promote their interpretations of Islam.
Some locals even travelled to the Gulf States to continue studying.
A few hotheads reportedly joined Chechen fighters who were taking on the Russians in the hills. But trouble only began last year when local authorities shut down all the mosques in the city bar one.
Zaur, 30, who witnessed the crackdown, said: "They came straight in with dogs and with their boots on.
''We were all dragged off to the police station.
''I was made to lie on the floor of a police truck and beaten with fists and batons."
After the attack in Beslan last year the anti-Islamic campaign in Nalchik increased. Hundreds were detained and tortured.
Valeri Khatazhuro, the city's human rights ombudsman, said: "The men they arrested were held in cells and beaten.
''They were forced to shave each other's beards off with rusty nails. Crosses were cut into their heads."
Next the local authorities issued a "blacklist" of alleged Islamic militants with nearly 400 names on it.
The whole exercise was used as an excuse to settle political scores and extort bribes.
One local explained how the list was compiled.
First police were sent to the mosques where they wrote down the names of young men. Then commanders scratched off the names of friends and relatives. Those who had rich parents were approached with a view to extorting bribes to get their names removed.
The remainder were officially proclaimed to be terror suspects.
