Released Russian journalist slams Russian jailers as "sadists"

MOSCOW, Feb 29 (AFP) -
A Russian war reporter snared in a murky Chechnya prisoner-swap, said Tuesday sadistic Russian guards had beaten him and tortured other inmates at a Chechen detention camp he likened to Stalin's gulag.

"I can tell you, for the first time, that I was not in the hands of the secret services but of sadists, who held me in the Chernokozovo concentration camp," said the reporter, Andrei Babitsky.

"I suffered the same treatment as everyone, without exception, who passes through there. That is to say dozens of blows with batons," he said in an Internet interview with his employer, the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

He told the private NTV station that he had heard the screams of a woman being tortured at the camp, adding that another man had been beaten black and blue by guards at the detention centre in northern Chechnya.

"We've all read about concentration camps during the Stalin era, we all know about the German camps -- it's exactly the same there," said Babitsky, who appeared tired and drawn during the interview, conducted in his home.

Whilst in the camp, "they tortured a woman. I say tortured because I can't find another word for it. Her screams showed that she was suffering extreme, unbearable pain, and over a long period," he said.

Guards threatened to mutilate another man they were torturing, he added, and dragged the inmate down a corridor, he added.

"I saw people beaten very heavily, black and blue, for example Aslanbek Charipov, from Katir-Yurt, who was beaten endlessly, morning, midday and night. Most of his teeth were broken," Babitsky added.

Guards at the camp forced prisoners to scramble along the camp's corridors on their hands and knees while being beaten with rubber batons. "They were forced to go up to a certain officer, saying 'Mr Colonel' and thanking him," Babitsky said.

The journalist, who earned the authorities' ire with his critical reports of Russia's campaign in Chechnya, was released from jail in southern Russia early Tuesday and flown to Moscow on Interior Minister Vladimir Rushailo's official plane.

His release came hours after acting President Vladimir Putin criticised the reporter's continued detention on charges of possessing a false passport and membership of an armed group.

The public prosecutors' office said Tuesday it would still press charges against the award-winning correspondent, Interfax reported, although Babitsky insisted the fake document was planted on him.

Babitsky, 35, disappeared in Chechnya mid-January before being handed over to rebel forces in a bizarre exchange for three Russian soldiers earlier this month.

He emerged last Friday in the southern Russian republic of Dagestan, only to be re-arrested.

The Ukraine, it seems, declared default.

L-chan,
as per our elections topic - I HOPE it's both, otherwise you'n'I are screwed big time..

Via Yahoo you can check out a story that ran in the LA Times about a tour of the Russian Cherno. camp taken by Journalists. One can make there own conclusions but the Russian admited they "cleaned" up the place before the tour...

http://www.washtimes.com/world/news3-02292000.htm By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES


China stepped up its war of words over Taiwan yesterday, bluntly threatening to fire long-range nuclear missiles at the United States if it defends the island.
The warning, published in the official People's Liberation Army newspaper, comes as a U.S. aircraft carrier and two cruise-missile destroyers recently began exercises off Japan. Defense officials said the warships could be sent to the Taiwan Strait in a crisis.
The official military newspaper, Liberation Army Daily, stated in a commentary made public in Beijing that U.S. intervention in a conflict between China and Taiwan would result in "serious damage" to U.S. security interests in Asia.
The military then warned that China could resort to long-range missile attacks on the United States during a regional conflict.
"China is neither Iraq nor Yugoslavia but a very special country," the newspaper stated.
While China is a permanent member of the Security Council of the United Nations, "on the other hand, it is a country that has certain abilities of launching strategic counterattack and the capacity of launching a long-distance strike," the article said.
"It is not a wise move to be at war with a country such as China, a point which the U.S. policy-makers know fairly well also," the newspaper said.
"The U.S. military will even be forced to [make] a complete withdrawal from the East Asian region, as they were forced to withdraw from southern Vietnam in those days," the paper said.
The article was unusually harsh, according to Pentagon officials familiar with the translation, and echoed a private warning made in 1995 by Chinese Lt. Gen. Xiong Guangkai.
Gen. Xiong, the PLA's top intelligence and foreign policy official, told a former Pentagon official at that time that Washington would not help defend Taiwan because it cared more about Los Angeles than Taiwan. The remark was reported to the White House as a threat to use nuclear weapons.
China's nuclear arsenal currently includes about 24 CSS-4 long-range missiles that are capable of hitting most of the United States with warheads of up to 5 megatons — the equivalent of 5 million tons of TNT. It is building two other road-mobile ICBMs and a new class of strategic missile submarines

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_660000/660225.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_660000/660817.stm Shatoi falls

me, my point was it kind of funny the stories that the web site saying 61 planes were lost and said were written by the AP, London Times, US News and world reports etc...never made it to the web via people posting links who were against NATOs air war while it was taking place leads me to think they were made up by that web site after the fact. 61 planes nope didn't happen. Although the excuses the site gives for the lack of proof are kind of funny. Planes bown into so many peaces they would not be reconized, planes crashed in areas unaccessable yada yada yada.

China 24 ICBMs...USA 6000 Nukes. They better do the math before launching anything.

Igor whats "UFC 25"?

Gonzo I was waiting for such retarded reply from you.Only one has to land to destroy NY or LA so do you think you will win?Totally moronic response .You were set up

As far as planes go they showed downed US planes on Greek TV (NATO ally).UFC25? No idea.Nuclear war the planet loses.

Igor , if you think about it , it is not a "totally moronic response" . It is known as mutually assured distruction (MAD), something that has kept Russian and USA nukes at bay since the early 50s.

Gonzo it is absolutly moronic response, do math Nuclear bombs =no more planet Earth.

Right which is exactly why China threatening to fire long range missles at the US can just be said to be saber ratteling.

February 29, 2000

Chechen Hostage Tells Story Of Horror And Fear
By Andrei Shukshin

When Alisher Orazaliyev first heard the roar of warplanes and the thunder of explosions he knew something was set to change in his life as a hostage of Chechen kidnappers.

As the air raids grew more frequent and Russian troops drew closer to the town of Urus-Martan where he and 15 other people were being held for ransom by a Chechen warlord, only one thing seemed to matter - who would get him first.

"Honestly, I did not really believe I would ever walk free," he told a news conference just days after a Russian federal security service (FSB) squad ended his several months in captivity.

"There you come to live with the idea you might not be alive in five minutes' time," he told a news conference at the FSB's Moscow headquarters, the once feared KGB Lubyanka building.

Orazaliyev, 22, a Kazakh businessman, went to Chechnya last July to see Chechen friends who locked him up in a concrete cellar and demanded money for his release from his relatives.

Orazaliyev said his captors, who treated their prisoners cruelly, killed at least three other hostages, including Itar-Tass news agency photographer Vladimir Yatsina.

Yatsina was shot dead when it became clear he was too ill to make the journey from Urus-Martan, 20 km (12 miles) south-east of the regional capital Grozny, to the southern mountains where the Chechens were evacuating their prisoners under the Russian onslaught, Orazaliyev said.

The two other victims were a retired intelligence officer, beaten to death with sticks, and an Emergencies Ministry official, who had his head sawn off after an abortive breakout attempt.

"Their attitude to representatives of the Russian security services was really horrible," Orazaliyev said.

His report could not be independently confirmed.

Orazaliyev said only one of his fellow prisoners had been freed during his captivity - a Russian businessman whose relatives paid a hefty ransom after the kidnappers sent them two of his fingers.

CHECHNYA PLAGUED BY KIDNAPPINGS

Kidnappings for ransom money have become the most profitable business in Chechnya along with primitive oil refining since Russia withdrew from the region in 1996 after almost two years of war, leaving it in the hands of rival gangs.

Alexander Zdanovich, the FSB spokesman, said up to 800 hostages, including foreigners, were believed to be still held captive in the mountainous areas of Chechnya where Russian troops are trying to crush the remnants of rebel resistance.

In 1998, three Britons and a New Zealander, employees of a British telecommunications firm, were seized in Grozny. Their severed heads were later found at a Chechen roadside.

Such brutal incidents have deterred international aid organizations from returning to the region during the latest war, which began five months ago when Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, now also acting president, sent troops into Chechnya. Moscow cited the rampant lawlessness in and around Chechnya as one of the reasons for the decision to reinvade the province.

Russia also blames the rebel fighters for a series of bomb blasts in Moscow and other cities last autumn which killed nearly 300 people. The Chechens deny responsibility.