Hundreds join the protest action in Ingushetia

The number of the participants of the spontaneous meeting, held today in Ingushetia with a demand to release the two local residents kidnapped yesterday, is permanently increasing, and by 2 p.m. it has reached some 700-800 persons.

The main demand of the protesters is to establish the whereabouts of the two residents of Ingushetia kidnapped on September 18 and release them.

Musa Medov, Minister of Internal Affairs of Ingushetia, arrived to meet the participants of the rally. He promised to help in searching the kidnapped persons; however, he failed to persuade the people to go home.

In the afternoon on September 18, at the exit from the city of Grozny, employees of undefined power agencies kidnapped two residents of Surkhakhi village - Magomed Osmanovich Aushev, 25, and Magomed Maksharipovich Aushev, 22.

The young men were coming back to Ingushetia from their trip to Astrakhan. In the vicinity of Chernorechye settlement of the Zavodskoy District of Grozny, the taxi in which the Aushevs were was blocked by three automobiles - a white "Gazel" and two "Zhigulis," models 10 and 115. The people in camouflage who jumped out of them pulled the Aushevs out of the taxi, beat them, forced into one of their cars and departed in the direction of Ingushetia.

According to human rights activists, this June one of the Aushev brothers, namely Magomed Osmanovich Aushev, 25, was detained by power fighters during a retaliatory cleanup ("zachistka") in Surkhakhi village. Then, he was taken out to Vladikavkaz, where he was exposed to tortures and beatings.

Besides, one of the employees tried to recruit him as an agent. After his release, Magomed Aushev filed a complaint to Ingushetia's MIA leaders listing all the above facts and asking to protect him from arbitrariness. However, some days later unknown "power agents" rushed again into the Aushevs' house; they were looking for Magomed, but he was not at home at that moment.

The relatives of Magomed Osmanovich Aushev assert that this kidnapping is directly connected with the events of this June.

The Chechen MIA has reported that yesterday no representatives of the law enforcement bodies of this Republic undertook any special operations in the vicinity of Chernorechye, and they have no relation to the kidnapping of the Aushev brothers, residents of Ingushetia.