Chernokozovo

Coordinates: 43°40′32″N 45°21′11″E / 43.675465°N 45.353037°E / 43.675465; 45.353037 Chernokozovo (Чернокозово) is a small village^[1] in Naursky District of northern Chechnya which is a site of an infamous Russian prison.

Chernokozovo prison

Chernokozovo prison is a former Soviet-era maximum-security penitentiary facility. It was re-opened by Russian federal interior ministry forces at the end of 1999 during the Second Chechen War, officially as a "temporary reception center for the persons detained on the grounds of vagrancy and begging".^[2]

In early 2000, Chernokozovo SIZO prison gained worldwide notoriety for atrocities including severe torture, rapes and other prisoner abuse and extortion (widespread practice of releasing prisoners ransom) when it served as an unnoficial prison camp for captured separatist fighters as well as one of at least four main "filtration camps" (or "filtration points") for male and female civilians (including children and the Russian journalist Andrei Babitsky) who were detained as "suspicious persons" at hundreds of checkpoints and non-selectively rounded-up during indiscriminate "cleansing operations" (zachistka) and then kept there without any charges.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]}

Officially, about 10,000 people passed through the "filtration point" at Chernokozovo, however the leading Russian human rights group Memorial has alleged that the real figure is many times as high, and the overall number of those having passed through the estabilished and ad-hoc "filtration points" might be as high as about 200,000 (out of the population of less than one million). According to Memorial, the purpose of the "filtration" system in Chechnya, besides being part of the general terror system of suppression and intimidation of the population, was to create a network of informers through the enforced recruitation.^[2]

Since 2005, Chernokozovo detention center's status is of a "penal colony" for convicts, run by interior ministry forces of the local government of the Chechen Republic led by Ramzan Kadyrov, who is personally taking part in its management.^[11] Living conditions there reportedly improved vastly since 2000, however still remain bad (for example, healthy persons are kept together with tuberculosis patients) and reports of continued beatings, torture and other abuse persist.^[12][13]

ECHR rulings

In 2007, in the first ruling on a torture case from Chechnya, the European Court of Human Rights found Russia guilty of torturing two Chechen brothers, Adam and Arbi Chitayev, at Chernokozovo during their detention between April and October 2000, finding "that their suffering was particularly serious and cruel".^[14][15]

Zura Bitiyeva, another former Chernokozovo detainee who had filed a case with the Court relating to her torture, was killed in 2003 along with three members of her family. In a 2008 ruling, the Court ruled that her detention in Chernokozovo had been in "total disregard of the requirement of lawfulness" and that the killings could be attributed to the Russian state.^[16]

See also

• Komsomolskoye massacre, including an alleged mass summary execution of detained Chechen combatants at Chernokozovo

References

1. ^ Street trading in the Chernokozovo village, RIAN, 01.03.2003
2. ^ ^{a b c} Filtration System, Memorial, 2008/09/04
3. ^ Chechens `raped and beaten' in detention camps, The Independent, February 10, 2000
4. ^ Chechens Report Torture in Russian Camp, The New York Times, February 18, 2000
5. ^ Tales of torture leak from Russian camps, The Observer, 19 February 2000
6. ^ Tales of Horror Emerge From Chechnya Prison, Los Angeles Times, February 28, 2000
7. ^ Real scale of atrocities in Chechnya: New evidence of cover-up, Amnesty International, 24 Mar 2000 (ReliefWeb)
8. ^ Cries from Putin's torture pit, The Guardian, 15 October 2000
9. ^ Inside the 'Hell' of Chernokozovo, Human Rights Watch, 26 October 2000 (The Moscow Times)
10. ^ Abu-Ghraib is a resort compared to Chechnya, Kavkaz Center, 19 May 2004
11. ^ Chechnya: Kadyrov Uses 'Folk Islam' For Political Gain, RFE/RL, December 06, 2007
12. ^ Dark shadows in 'normal' Chechnya, BBC News, 27 February 2006
13. ^ Caucasian Knot | Chechnya: Chernokozovo inmates complain of tortures
14. ^ European Court Finds Two Chechens Were Tortured: Ruling Is Panel's First On Issue in Restive Russian Republic, Washington Post, January 19, 2007
15. ^ CHAMBER JUDGMENT: CHITAYEV AND CHITAYEV v. RUSSIA
16. ^ Russian Federation - Amnesty International Report 2008

External links

• UNHCR | Refworld | "Welcome to Hell": Arbitrary Detention, Torture, and Extortion in Chechnya
• Document - Russian Federation (Chechnya): Rape and torture of children in Chernokozovo "filtration camp" | Amnesty International