Chechen law-enforcement agencies probing torture reports
CHECHNYA, 9 March, Caucasus Times: Chechen law-enforcement agencies have started investigating reports of torture in operational search bureau No2 (ORB-2) following a complaint by a resident of Urus-Martanovskiy District.
Ramzan Khasiyev, a resident of the village of Goyskoye in Urus-Martanovskiy District, complained that he was taken to the central district hospital with numerous injuries and concussion after spending just 11 hours at ORB-2, where he was forced to sign a confession.
“There, I was put onto a device and my feet were tied so that I could not move. They put on some kind of clams with wires on my hands and started torturing me with electric shocks,” Khasiyev wrote in his complaint.
Another Chechnya resident, Shahid Ipayev, says that he was also tortured at ORB-2. He says that people at ORB 2 systematically hit his head against the wall and insulted him.
In early March, Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov and the Council of Europe’s High Commissioner for Human Rights Thomas Hammarberg, who visited Chechnya, also criticized the use of torture at ORB-2, which was set up at the Interior Ministry’s main department in the Southern Federal District in 2001.