Sunday, June 21, 2009
Russian activists say Chechen missing after deportation from Egypt
Last Updated: 21st June 2009, 1:57pm
MOSCOW — An ethnic Chechen has gone missing in Russia after being deported from Egypt, human rights activists said Sunday, suggesting authorities may have detained him to put pressure on his father — a Chechen separatist leader.
Amnesty International had warned that Maskhud Abdullayev could be subject to torture if he were sent back to Russia.
Activists said he has not been seen since he arrived late Friday on a flight to Moscow, though they said they did not believe he was wanted on any charges in Russia.
Abdullayev was one of several Russians detained in Egypt last month, according to activists and Russian media. Most were students from the North Caucasus, a heavily Muslim region of southern Russia that includes Chechnya. Persistent violence in the region has spawned human rights abuses blamed on both militants and government forces, though large-scale fighting in Chechnya has abated after two separatist wars in the last 15 years.
Local media said Abdullayev and at least five others were deported apparently because they were in Egypt illegally.
Rights activist Yelena Sannikova told Russia’s Ekho Moskvy radio Saturday that she feared Abdullayev had been detained by Russian intelligence or security authorities.
She said she had been asked by Abdullayev’s mother, who lives in Azerbaijan, to meet her son at the airport, but he never emerged from the arrivals area.
Russian Federal Security Service officials declined comment, and Interior Ministry officials could not immediately be reached, while Interior Ministry branch in Chechnya said it had no information about Abdullayev.
Oleg Orlov, chairman of the rights group Memorial, said he would appeal Monday to officials for information about Abdullayev’s whereabouts. “We will try to get an answer,†he told Ekho Moskvy on Sunday.
Amnesty warned last week that Abdullayev would be at risk of torture or other ill-treatment if returned to Russia because he is the son of Supyan Abdullayev, a Chechen commander identified by a separatist-allied Web site as top rebel leader Doku Umarov’s deputy.
Ekho Moskvy quoted Abdullayev’s mother as saying that she divorced Supyan Abdullayev nine years ago, and that her son has had no contact with him for years.
Amnesty said Maskhud Abdullayev has at least a claim to refugee status in Azerbaijan, where he reportedly lived before travelling to Egypt.
On May 29, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said several Russians studying at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University were among more than 30 people detained by Egyptian security services a few days earlier. Egyptian authorities told the Russian Embassy they were checking whether the students were in Egypt legally, the ministry said.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who has spoken about the need to make Russia’s justice system more fair and improve the rule of law, is scheduled to visit Egypt this week.
http://www.edmontonsun.com/news/world/2009/06/21/9880871.html
