CHERNOKOZOVO, Russia — At 8 a.m. Sunday, Iman Muradov was escorted out of the gates of the notorious prison here and became a free man--or rather, a free child. His apparent crime: being tall for his age.
Iman, who is 13, was arrested a month ago in the town of Alkhan-Yurt after it had been newly reoccupied by Russian forces fighting the separatist rebels in Chechnya. When the Russians asked the gangly teen for his documents, Iman told them he didn't have any. He won't be eligible for a passport until he turns 14 in April.
So Iman spent the following month in Russia's most infamous "filtration" camp for suspected rebels, a facility that almost no outside observers have been allowed to visit. And Sunday, he became the latest former inmate to testify to torture and other human rights abuses here.
"The guards would carry around a portable music player and turn on music when they were torturing someone, so people in the next cell wouldn't hear," Iman said.
Tortures his cellmates endured included rape, the pulling out of their fingernails and the insertion of lighted matches in their genitals. He himself went through the "helicopter ride": He was hung by his ankles outside a flying helicopter and told he would be dropped if he didn't confess to being with the rebels.
"They said no one would ever find me or figure out how I was killed," he said. "And I knew they were right."
Iman says he lost count of the number of beatings he received. He got them "every day for the first three days and on and off after that," he said. "They used truncheons so they wouldn't leave bruises. They hit me in the kidneys, my chest, my feet. But they didn't strike my face," to keep the injuries from being readily visible.
For the last several months, Russia has been on a furious offensive against the separatists in Chechnya, who have been driven back to their bases in the republic's southern mountains. But no less furious has been the campaign's aftermath in recaptured territory, as Russian soldiers prowl in search of anyone who may have helped the rebel fighters--and whom they can punish.
Russia Seeks to Disprove Claims
Tales of human rights abuses at the Chernokozovo camp have accumulated to such a degree that Russian officials have begun to take steps to counteract them. This week, they are expected to permit a number of journalists and Alvaro Gil-Robles, the human rights commissioner for the Council of Europe, to tour the prison.
