BY IVA SAVIC
It was a Thursday, December 18th 2003, when 28 year-old Bashir Mutzolgov came back from a day trip to his native town of Karabulak in Ingushetia, one of Russia’s mountainous southern republics neighboring Chechnya. He visited his parents and older brother Magomed upon return. It was 3pm and time for midday prayer. Magomed and Bashir needed to wash up but the bathroom in the family house was occupied. Since Bashir was the younger of the two brothers, Magomed was next in line. So Bashir headed to his house diagonally across the street to use the bathroom. He was fasting that day, but Zanat, his first-born, four-month-old daughter was not. He stopped by the local store to pick up milk and bread for her. In front of his house Bashir ran into a former student with whom he was exchanging a few words, when suddenly, a speeding car appeared, out of which men in army camouflage with black masks jumped out. One of the men quickly approached and smashed Bashir’s face with the butt of an automatic rifle. Bashir toppled over and the men dragged him by his feet, throwing him into the car between the front and back seats.
A witness to the attack ran to the nearby police checkpoint to report the incident. But when the kidnapper’s car pulled up to that same check point, a Russian man flashed a Federal Security Services (FSB) special permission and the guard did not dare ask for his name, let alone attempt to stop the kidnappers. The car sped away with Bashir on the floor between the car seats. It was the last time he was seen.
In the aftermath of the Chechen wars, illegal killings and kidnappings have become increasingly common in Ingushetia and other majority Muslim republics neighboring Chechnya where the Russian military and security services often equate devout Muslims with insurgents and eliminate them with impunity in counterterrorist operations.
The search
“We contacted all the authorities”, Magomed recalls of the day of his brother’s kidnapping. Magomed himself reported the case to the prosecutor’s office, but it quickly became apparent that he could not rely on them for help. While he sat in the office, the prosecutor actually called the FSB to ask if they conducted any special operations that day and if it would be alright for him to put out a report about the kidnapping.
Unwilling to leave the fate of his brother up to the diligence and good will of strangers, and with money in his pocket, Magomed traveled across Ingushetia, Chechnya and other neighboring republics, paying for any information of his brother’s whereabouts. He found out with some certainty that Bashir was first taken to the FSB’s central office in Magas, the Ingush capital, and then to Hankala, a military base in Chechnya widely known in the region as a place where many have been held for questioning, brutally tortured or simply disappeared.
A few months later, a man approached Magomed with the following offer: $5000 – an exorbitant amount of money in the underdeveloped Ingushetia, for the names of the kidnappers. Magomed paid and was told that an FSB colonel Leonid U. Tihomirov from Kostorma, a town north of Moscow, was the kidnapper in charge. The information was confirmed through other sources. “I immediately gave the name to the prosecutor” Magomed explained. “They called Tihomirov who admitted being posted in Ingushetia, but claimed that he was relieved of duty prior to the kidnapping. Although FSB officers usually have 6 month tours, and Bashir’s disappearance took place only two and a half months since the beginning of Tihomirov’s rotation, the prosecutor dropped the lead.”
“I don’t know how many letters I’ve written.” Magomed tells of his futile attempts to work the legal system. But thanks to little or no effort by the local authorities, the case became one of many sent to the European Court of Human Rights. Bashir was never found and his little daughter’s first word was “uncle.”
In his continued attempts to find Bashir, Magomed visited the regional office of the Russia-wide human rights organization Memorial that deals with cases of the disappeared in Chechnya. “I looked at the list of the disappeared Chechens. There were 1,927 names on it. No one saw it, but I cried. It was then that I swore that this will not happen in Ingushetia” recalled Magomed.
Although stoic in his recount of the events, Magomed’s memories of rage and helplessness he felt are still fresh. “I wanted to buy a gun. I was ready to shoot at the first military column…But I knew that if I did that I would also not return. I thought about my actions, about what was right… Those men also have wives and children. So I decided to make them answer to the law.”
Magomed’s decision was made easier by his firm belief that the authorities fear being questioned and shamed publicly, in court, more than anything else. Counting on this as leverage, in 2005 Magomed founded “MASHR”, an organization that helps families of the disappeared navigate through the Russian legal system.
Nevertheless, when asked how he feels about having the name of the man who took his brother away, Magomed admits. “My heart suffers to this day, and I know that if I ever went to Kostorma, I would kill him.”
He is consoled by reverberations his work has had. “It is people like you that make it impossible for us to do our work” Magomed recalled the words directed to him once by a security officer. “By work, they mean lawless killing.”
Words like this are proof that is doing the right thing. But it is by no means easy. Violence in Ingushetia has increased and MASHR now has 169 names on its list of the disappeared. The list of the killed is much longer. For his efforts, Magomed has been shot at, threatened and followed. But, he calmly explains, “Strength is in justice. And besides, when my day comes, I will die. But in the mean time, I want to live with dignity.”