Human Rights 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.

Dozens of civilians were shot to death when Russian soldiers rampaged through a suburb of Chechnya's capital earlier this month, human rights observers said Tuesday, calling it the worst massacre of the war in the separatist republic. The New York-based group Human Rights Watch said it has evidence of 62 killings in Aldy, in western Grozny, after Chechen rebels abandoned the capital at the end of January and the Russians moved in Feb. 5.

Chechens trying to leave their war-ravaged republic are being tortured in Russian detention camps and subjected to severe beatings, rape and other brutality, refugees and human rights groups say. The allegations come on the heels of other complaints of human rights abuses in Russia's offensive in Chechnya, including reports of summary executions of civilians in Grozny, the Chechen capital.

As Russian authorities Tuesday brushed off the mounting evidence that troops have executed dozens of civilians here in the Chechen capital in the past two weeks, allegations of more atrocities were emerging. One of the latest is the story of Deshi Inderbiyeva, a 30-year-old Chechen woman who found the bodies of her two elder sisters, charred and unrecognizable, in a potato cellar in the yard of her mother's ruined house in suburban Grozny last Wednesday.

Allegations of atrocities by Russian soldiers in Chechnya continued to mount Thursday as a prominent human rights group charged that occupying forces have executed at least 38 civilians--including two children--in Grozny, the separatist republic's capital.

Acting Russian President Vladimir V. Putin declared Sunday that federal forces had scored a major victory in Chechnya, taking control of the republic's war-torn capital, Grozny, after seven weeks of fierce fighting with separatist rebels. "The last stronghold of the terrorists' resistance--Grozny's Zavodskoy district--has just been seized, and the Russian flag has been hoisted above one of the administrative buildings," Putin said in a television interview.

As a young agent of the Soviet secret police, Mikhail A. Neverovsky remembers going with a squad of soldiers to the homes of two families in 1949 and delivering the order: They would be sent to Siberia that day. "We gave them two hours to collect everything, first at one house and then the other," Neverovsky recalled in an interview last week. "I helped them pack their things."

When serial killer Vladimir N. Retunsky was sentenced to death last month for the murder of eight young women and girls, the victims' families and friends offered to carry out his punishment on the spot. "Give him to us!" they shouted in court as a panel of judges handed down the sentence. "We'll tear him to pieces!" Under heavy police guard, the murderer was hauled off to death row, but he wasn't there for long. Earlier this month, President Boris N.

Prosecutors launched a drive Tuesday to outlaw the Jehovah's Witnesses, accusing them of fomenting religious strife at the start of a trial that could have sweeping implications for all faiths in Russia. The case is the most prominent test so far of Russia's new law on religion, which is designed to curb the activities of foreign religious organizations seeking new members in Russia. Prosecutors brought charges under an article seeking to outlaw dangerous cults.

Thousands of children confined to orphanages across Russia suffer "appalling levels of abuse and neglect" that constitute a violation of their human rights, the organization Human Rights Watch charged Wednesday. In a detailed report, the group documented how children in some orphanages were kept in bare, dark rooms without stimulation, tied to furniture to restrain them, cruelly punished and deprived of toys and books.