Georgian rights defenders concerned with state of Chechen refugees

A press conference held at the office of the rights defender Nana Kakabadze on March 3 was devoted to the relations between Chechen refugees and Georgian authorities. Journalists, representatives of Chechen refugees living in Tbilisi and US Embassy officials were invited to take part in it.

According to rights defenders' information, Mulkoyev and Alkhanov, Chechens abducted in Georgia and transported to Russia, are being held in an investigatory isolation ward of the Federal Security Service in Yessentuki. In view of it, Georgian rights defenders have a number of questions to the country's leadership. They believe the authorities' actions are beyond the legal scope. There are instructions in international legal documents banning the extradition of people, mutual obligations, a common need to establish a man's guilt judicially, and so on. Besides, Chechen refuges are living now in expectation of repressive measures on the part of President Mikhail Saakashvili. Georgian public organizations are inclined to draw attention of the local authorities to all these problems.

The rights defenders and refugees also hold that the Georgian leaders take no step unknown to the United States. They think the US authorities are responsible to a great extent for what is happening with the Chechen refugees in Georgia.