The kidnapping of two men at a checkpoint between Roshni-Chu and Urus-Martan and their subsequent disappearance without a trace

October 5, 2001

***
At noon, at a checkpoint between the settlements of Roshni-Chu and Urus-Martan, Russian soldiers abducted Ruslanbek Said-Adnanovich Vakhaev, born in 1974, and Magomed Mamedovich Dzhambekov, born in 1978. Both are permanent residents of Urus-Martan; the first of them lived at the address: st. Kuibysheva, 189, and the second - Bakinskaya St., 5. They were driving a white Zhiguli car of the sixth model (registration number 674 xt 95/gas) that belonged to Magomed Dzhambekov. There was a woman and a child in the cabin.

Witnesses to the abduction were afraid to give official testimony to the district prosecutor's office. However, they unofficially said that the military stopped the car for inspection and then gave permission for it to pass. Before the car had time to move, the command to stop came again. Magomed Dzhambekov was indignant, and a skirmish arose between him and the military. They pulled him out of the car and began to beat him. Ruslanbek Vakhaev intervened in what was happening. According to eyewitnesses, he tried to settle the matter peacefully, but the military beat the men, forced them into a car and took them away in an unknown direction (according to other sources, one of them was put in a car, the other in an armored personnel carrier).

In search of the abducted, the relatives turned to the State Duma deputy of the Russian Federation A. Aslakhanov, to human rights organizations, to representatives of the ICRC, to the bureau of V. Kalamanov, to the head of the administration of the Chechen Republic A. Kadyrov, as well as to the military commandant’s office of the district, the police department, the FSB and the prosecutor’s office (including the Office of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation for the Southern Federal District, the prosecutor's office of the republic and the Urus-Martan district, and the military prosecutor's office). Some of the statements were addressed to specific individuals - the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation V. Ustinov, the military prosecutor of the UGA (s) A. Mokritsky, the prosecutor of the Chechen Republic V. Kravchenko. The only result of all these efforts can be considered the initiation of a criminal case (No. 61153) on November 3, 2002 on the grounds of a crime under Art. 126 part 1 (kidnapping) of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. A year later, on January 3, 2003, Magomed Dzhambekov’s father, Mamed Dzhambekov, was recognized as a victim.

The criminal case was suspended several times with the wording “due to the impossibility of identifying the persons involved in the crime” (Article 195 Part 3 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the RSFSR), but then it was resumed. After another suspension in early November 2005, the relatives of Ruslanbek Vakhaev filed a complaint with the court about the inaction of the prosecutor's office, and then appealed to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Legal protection of the victims was carried out by Russian human rights activist Alexander Lyuboslavsky. In turn, the Memorial Human Rights Center accepted a statement from them on May 12, 2006. At the end of 2008, Ruslanbek Vakhaev and Magomed Dzhambekov were listed as missing after their abduction by representatives of Russian security forces.

Magomed Dzhambekov, according to his mother, Aikat Zelimkhanovna Dzhambekova, wears size 42 shoes, his weight is 75 kg, his height is 170 cm. He has a heavy build, brown hair, and brown eyes. There is a postoperative scar on the right side of the body, no fractures, all teeth are normal. At the time of the abduction, he was wearing a black jacket and dark blue corduroy trousers, a striped T-shirt, black leather shoes with thick soles with laces, and a green corduroy skullcap. He had his passport and driver's license with him.

A special feature of Ruslanbek Vakhaev can be considered a bald spot and scars on the elbow of his right hand.

According to relatives, neither Dzhambekov nor Vakhaev took part in the hostilities.


From the book “People Live Here”, Usam Baysaev, Dmitry Grushkin, 2006.

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