Official acknowledgement of the impunity for serious human rights violations

Official acknowledgement of the impunity for serious human rights violations

Every now and then, however, senior officials have acknowledged the failures of this system, sometimes very bluntly. Amongst the most critical comments made in recent years were statements made by Ivan Sydoruk, a Deputy Prosecutor General with responsibility for the oversight of law enforcement agencies in the North Caucasus, when speaking in front of a Council of the Federation’s Committee for Legal and Judiciary Issues on 25 September 2010. He was reported as speaking of an “extremely complicated” situation in the North Caucasus resulting in a four-fold increase in crime rate in the region. He blamed the police and the military for negligence, corruption and cases of cowardice and betrayal. Reportedly, he tried to reinterpret and partly retract some of his statements the following day.¹⁵⁹

Broader problems with the investigation of crimes in the North Caucasus were also reportedly raised by the Prosecutor General Yury Chaika in the course of an inter-agency meeting of heads of law enforcement agencies held in Yessentuki in February 2010. He was reported as denouncing the endemic corruption affecting law enforcement agencies, numerous violations in the course of investigations and the concealment of unresolved crimes (he mentioned 260 such cases in Ingushetia which, according to him had been unlawfully archived because the relevant allegations were dismissed as unconfirmed), though it is unclear whether these also included alleged human rights violations.¹⁶⁰

Particularly frank admissions of the failure to investigate cases of enforced disappearance, unlawful detention and torture were made in the letters written by the Head of the Investigation Directorate for the Chechen Republic (then, still part of the Prosecutor’s Office), Viktor A. Ledenev, to the Chechen Minister of the Interior, dated 17 August 2010, and by the Deputy Prosecutor of the Chechen Republic, Nikolay A. Khabarov, to the Chair of the NGO Inter-Regional Committee Against Torture, dated 11 March 2011.¹⁶¹ The first letter sharply criticises the refusal by officials operating under the Chechen Ministry of the Interior to cooperate with an official investigation, their failure to respond to official requests by members of the Investigative Committee and responses which failed to provide the requested information. The second letter complains of the “continued problem of abductions and lack of [their] effective investigation”, violations by members of the Investigative Committee and ineffective investigation of abductions, and even denounces “incidents of cover-up of [such] crimes … directly by investigators themselves.”¹⁶²

While this correspondence relates specifically to the Chechen Republic, many of the problems revealed in it, such as the ineffective investigation of crimes allegedly committed by members of law enforcement agencies and their successful refusal to cooperate with the investigation would appear, from the cases documented in this report, to apply equally to Ingushetia as well.

At a meeting with Amnesty International delegates in Moscow, members of the Investigative Committee recognized the failure to investigate reports of enforced disappearances in the North Caucasus in particular as a problem. However, they refused to accept that the failure was the result of inadequate investigations. Rather, they stressed such ‘objective’ problems as the circumstances surrounding the conflict in Chechnya several years ago, when many allegations were reported and when an effective investigation was allegedly not possible for security reasons, on account of the irretrievable loss of crucial evidence, and the lack of trust on the part of the local population (only the last of these factors applies in Ingushetia).¹⁶³ They confirmed however that the responsibility of law enforcement officials for enforced disappearances was possible and was always considered along with other possible explanations.¹⁶⁴

Faced with a question regarding specific examples of successful investigation and prosecution of cases involving law enforcement officials as perpetrators in Ingushetia, the Investigative Committee officials cited one such case, that of Magomed Yevloev. A prominent civil society activist and the owner of an independent website known for its strong criticism of the then Ingushetia’s leadership, Magomed Yevloev was detained by police at Magas airport on 31 August 2008, put inside a car and driven away. Later on that day, he was admitted to hospital with a gunshot wound to his head and died without regaining consciousness.¹⁶⁵ On 11 December 2009, an Ingushetian policeman Ibraghim Yevloev (no relation) was found guilty of his accidental killing and sentenced to two years imprisonment (later reduced to two years in an open prison [ogranichenie svobody] on appeal).¹⁶⁶ No other examples were offered. Amnesty International is only aware of one other case, that of Zelimkhan Chitigov (see above), where at least one of the alleged perpetrators of torture from among law enforcement officials is likely to be prosecuted.

These piecemeal admissions do not amount to any kind of meaningful acknowledgement by the highest levels of the Investigative Committee and Prosecutor General’s Office – and ultimately of the political leadership of the Russian Federation itself – that the ongoing impunity for serious human rights violations in Ingushetia and the wider North Caucasus is unacceptable and must urgently stop.