Novye Aldi massacre
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Novye Aldi massacre was a February 5, 2000 incident in which Russian federal forces summarily executed at least 60 civilians in the Novye Aldi suburb of Grozny, the capital of Chechnya. The killings occured during a zachistka (cleansing operation) conducted several days after the federal forces had established control over the city in the course of the Second Chechen War.
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[edit] Events
According to the June 2000 report [1] by the Human Rights Watch, some killings were accompanied by demands for money or jewelry, which served as a pretext for execution if the amount proffered was insufficient; several of the victims lacked identity papers. A few witnesses stated that soldiers forcibly removed the victims' gold teeth or stole jewelry from corpses.
Despite the great cultural stigma attached to rape in Chechnya's predominantly Muslim communities, reports of the rape of women by Russian soldiers in Aldi on February 5 have surfaced.
Russian contract soldiers torched many homes of Chechen civilians in Aldi. The incidents of arson were wanton acts of gratuitous destruction. Some of the arson seemed to be primitive attempts to destroy evidence of summary executions and other civilian killings. In one incident, the arson itself appeared to have been a murder attempt.
While federal servicemen engaged in some plunder on February 5, pillage on a massive scale took place during the following week. Witnesses stated that soldiers returned in large numbers on February 10, and in broad daylight brazenly stripped their homes of goods of value.
[edit] Investigation and denial
Investigators at the crime scene collected numerous empty cartridges and recorded tracks in the ground made by armoured personnel carriers. The investigation established that the sweep operation was conducted by special police force units (OMON) from St. Petersburg and Ryazan, yet the Russian authorities have failed to hold anyone accountable for the crime.
The Russian authorities' investigation into the Aldi massacre was accompanied by indignant public denial. Typical of the Russian military's reaction to HRW's preliminary report on the killings was a February 24 statement, by a Ministry of Defense spokesman, declaring that "these assertions are nothing but a concoction not supported by fact or any proof ... [and] should be seen as a provocation whose goal is to discredit the federal forces' operation against the terrorists in Chechnya."
[edit] European Court judgement
Great numbers of civilians have been extrajudicially executed in the course of both Chechen wars, and very few perpetrators have been brought to trial for their crimes. The European Court of Human Rights first found Russia guilty of serious human rights violations in Chechnya in February 2005, ruling that Russia had used disproportionate force in its military operations, indiscriminately targeted civilians, and failed to adequately investigate civilian deaths. [2]
On October 12, 2006, the EHCR held Russian state responsible for the summary execution of five members of the Estamirov family, including a pregnant woman and a one-year child. The bodies were discovered the same day, burnt and with several gunshots. At least eleven other incidents of summary executions committed on the same day in the same region of Chechnya are pending before the Court.
The ECHR noted that the Russian government had not disputed that the area was controlled by Russian federal forces at the time. The government did also not provide any explanation for its assertion that the deaths of the Estamirov family members were not linked to numerous other deaths in that area on that day. The Court also noted that the investigation into the deaths had not been completed and that the individuals responsible were not identified or indicted; because of this and other shortcomings the Court found that the Russian state had also violated its obligation to conduct a proper investigation. The Court also expressed its dissatisfaction with the Russian government's refusal to disclose all documents concerning the investigation into the deaths.
