GROZNY, Russia, Sept 28 (AFP) - Chechnya's public prosecutor wears combat fatigues and says without a hint of irony that many of the thousands of people reported disappeared since the beginning of the war in 1999 were abducted by "bandits" dressed as soldiers.
"Mister prosecutor, the most serious question is that of those people who have disappeared," Alvaro Gil-Robles, the Council of Europe's human rights commissioner, recently told Chechnya's acting prosecutor, Vladimir Chernyayev.
"There are some strictly criminal cases, but many also accuse federal forces and local police, saying complaints from families are either not accepted or are never followed up," Gil-Robles said while on a mission in Grozny.
The commissioner produced a letter from a woman who said her son had been arrested at a checkpoint in 2002 and had not been heard from since. "The mother filed a complaint and never got a response," Gil-Robles said.
Chernyayev acknowledged in response that disappearances of people in Chechnya without any explanation was a problem, but said local pro-Russian authorities were working on it and had made at least some progress.
"The problem exists," he said. "But regarding the cases you've mentioned, it is most of the time an act of bandits wearing the uniform of federal troops."
The fact that real Russian troops in Chechnya often wear masks to hide their faces "is permitted by antiterrorist legislation," Chernyayev added.
Of the 2,450 people reported to have disappeared without a trace since the start of the second war in Chechnya in 1999, criminal investigations have been opened into 1,749 of the cases, he explained.
And progress, he said, was being made: seven cases were solved in 2000, 15 in 2003 and 10 were solved in the first eight months of this year alone. Or, Gil-Robles said, roughly 50 cases over five years.
Chechnya's local pro-Russian administration said that at least 162 civilians were reported missing since the start of this year, while the Russian human rights group Memorial says 4,000 have vanished since 1999.
"In autumn 2002, a resident of Urus-Martan by the name of Khadayev witnessed the abduction of his son by men in military fatigues aboard an armoured vehicle, all of whom hid their faces except for the commander," said Dokka Istlayev, a Memorial representative in western Chechnya.
"Last March, the man went to the prosecutor to ask about progress in the investigation. Outside the building, he saw an officer: it was the chief of the group that kidnapped his son.
"So he hurried to see the prosecutor, but the judge on the case came out, looked at the suspect in question, and told the father: I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do," because, Istlayev asserted, the suspect was a member of Russia's FSB security agency.
Meanwhile a deputy to the acting Chechnya prosecutor, having disappeared to check on the case of the mother whose son had been arrested at a checkpoint and was not heard from again, emerged carrying the file on the case.
An investigation "confirmed the disappearance" of the woman's son, he said. It did not however show any involvement by Russian federal troops and so the case was closed.
Gil-Robles admitted that some of those reported disappeared could well be victims of criminal vendettas or abductions by rebel groups. Others might turn up again, like one disappeared Chechen who was later found as a refugee in Poland.