14 November 2008, 11:06
European MP investigates disappearances in South Ossetia
Italian Deputy of the European Parliament Julietto Chieza is investigating disappearances of young people from South Ossetia, whose fate is still unknown. According to some sources, the Ossetians were captured by Georgian militaries.
According to the MP, the list of 11 missing Ossetians was given to him during his recent visit to South Ossetia. Since the young men were taken prisoners in the regions adjoining South Ossetia, where safety is controlled by observers from the European Union, Mr Chieza thinks that it is the reason for the European party to conduct the investigation.
"We shall investigate", said Julietto Chieza on November 13 at the headquarters of the European Parliament in Brussels at a meeting with the delegation of South Ossetia. The parliamentarian plans to send respective inquiries to representative offices of Amnesty international and Human Rights Watch to Tbilisi, the "Gazeta.Ru" reports.
Dmitri Medoev, plenipotentiary envoy of the President of South Ossetia in Russia, has reported in his turn that the Ossetian party will provide the Parliament with the information about the situation in the buffer zone adjacent to the republic. The reason, as he said, is that the EU observers are poorly coping with their duties.
"By our sources, after October 8, 21 persons have been kidnapped from the zone, where EU observers shall hold monitoring. Among those kidnapped there are children, women and elderly persons," Mr Medoev has noted. According to his story, out of those kidnapped, only two persons have been returned for ransom, the RIA "Novosti" reports.