Khattuni resident kidnapped in Chechnya during "zachistka"

Yesterday, on September 14, in Khattuni, a village of the mountainous Vedeno District of the Chechen Republic, as local residents assert, a broad-scale "zachistka" (mopping-up) was conducted, during which a local resident was kidnapped. The republic's power structures refuse to make any comments.

"Yesterday in the morning, our village was blocked by militaries and employees of some local power agencies. Having blocked all the entrances and exit to and from the villages, they made house-by-house screening and check of residents' documents. In some streets, block-posts were deployed. In doing so, they behaved very aggressively and violently, making non-authorized searches of some of the houses," said a resident of the village, who preferred to remain anonymous.

According to local residents, in the course of yesterday's special operation in Khattuni, power agents kidnapped their fellow villager, "a young man Sheripov by surname, also known to his friends as Bashta." The source said that the young man was taken away only because "local power agents disliked him for some reason," while actually "neither the detainee nor his close relatives have any relation to militants."

The power structures of the republic prefer not to comment the information about the special operation undertaken yesterday in the morning in Khattuni. "The actions of passport checks, and targeted examinations with the aim to reveal and detain members of illegal armed formations and their helpers were and will be held in the republic. As to the resident of Khattuni allegedly kidnapped yesterday, we have no data and no application from relatives that such person had disappeared. Therefore, it's absolutely useless to talk to this topic," a spokesman of the Chechen MIA said in a telephone conversation with the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.