June 3, 2007
Chechnya: video evidence of torture
The Times Online obtained three videos recorded by mobile phone of two men and one woman being tortured in Chechnya.
In one of the videos, a shock treatment was delivered to a soldier, in apparent retribution for the theft of some oil that the victim is accused of having sold illegally.
“We’ll show you what happens to those caught stealing oil,” yells the man administering the shocks. “We’re not going to kill you or let you live. We’ll keep you in this state for two months until you’re neither a man nor a woman.”
"The video and two others, featuring a man being beaten with a stick as he sits on a bed and a woman being kicked on the ground where she is lying tied to a flagpole, are believed to show forces controlled by Kadyrov, who was rewarded for his loyalty to Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, in April when he was made leader of war-torn Chechnya.
Now that mobile phones with tiny video cameras have become common in Chechnya, the perpetrators of abuses often record them and use the footage to boast about their exploits to their fellow militia men. The videos are passed on to ordinary citizens in what human rights campaigners claim is a deliberate tactic to intimidate the population."
Elsewhere:
-- Egypt's Torture Video Sparks Outrage
-- Egyptian Prisoner's torture sent to his friend's cell phones by police
-- Video phones expose torture in Egypt
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