Russian national Oleg Kozlovsky\u00a0allegedly threatened with rape and execution after documenting protests in the\u00a0southern republic of Ingushetia.\u00a0Amnesty International researcher Oleg Kozlovsky has given details of his alleged abduction and torture at the hands of security officers in the southern Russian\u00a0republic of Ingushetia, 900 miles south of Moscow.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mr Kozlovksy travelled to the capital, Magas, on 5 October to document\u00a0on going\u00a0protests against a controversial border deal with neighbouring Chechnya. His ordeal began with a knock on his hotel door the following evening. On the other side was a man offering an introduction to an\u00a0opposition protest leader.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
On Monday, following a week of silence, Mr Kozlovsky listed the terrifying chain of events that, he says, happened after he agreed to follow the man.<\/p>\n
He was first taken to a car, where\u00a0he said\u00a0he was met by two other men who\u00a0presented themselves as law enforcement officers. After interrogating him, the men took away his phone, video camera, took him to a field, and then stripped him of his clothes.<\/p>\n
They took photographs and threatened to publish them on the internet. They threatened rape and\u00a0threatened violence against his children. They beat him and broke his ribs.<\/p>\n
Then, with a gun to his\u00a0head, they staged a mock execution.<\/p>\n
Mr Kozlovsky, who has been evacuated out of Russia by Amnesty, tells\u00a0The Independent<\/em> that he never believed his abductors would follow through with the execution. His killing would bring \u201cno benefit to them, only scandal\u201d, he reasons.<\/p>\n But he was worried that things could spiral out of control.<\/p>\n \u201cI couldn\u2019t rule out that things might get crazy enough, and took their threats to my family entirely seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n Protests against a controversial land swap agreement, now in their second week, have awoken these impoverished, sleepy, mostly Muslim lands at the foothills of the Caucasus.<\/p>\n A new agreement was supposed to have resolved a long-running border dispute between Ingushetia and neighbouring Chechnya,\u00a0the only regions of Russia not to be separated by legal administrative boundaries (a consequence of the Chechen declaration of independence in 1991 and subsequent wars).<\/p>\n Critics claim the agreement instead\u00a0serves\u00a0the expansionist ambitions of Chechnya\u2019s irascible leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, and represents a\u00a0capitulation by the\u00a0Ingushi\u00a0leadership.<\/p>\n The protests against the\u00a0agreement have been surprisingly well organised, and, so far, peaceful. After initially ratifying the agreement, deputies in the local Ingush parliament gave in to popular pressure and cancelled their vote.<\/p>\n While the protests are sensitive, there\u00a0is no obvious reason why Mr Kozlovsky would be targeted so violently. Ingushetia is considered to be relatively safe for journalists and activists. Local security services are very active but\u00a0restrictions are\u00a0rarely imposed\u00a0\u2013 unlike in Mr Kadyrov\u2019s Chechnya, which declared a ban on human rights activists last month.<\/p>\n That said, it is not the first time researchers and journalists have been met with extreme violence inside the republic. In 2016, men in balaclavas inflicted a terrifying arson attack on a minibus carrying journalists and human rights activists. Chechen security forces were thought to have been behind the attack.<\/p>\n A decade earlier, in 2007, human rights activist Oleg Orlov was abducted along with three Russian journalists. Ekaterina Sokrianskaia, director at the Conflict Analysis and Prevention Centre was working in Ingushetia at the time. She says this week\u2019s \u201calmost identical\u201d abduction brought back memories.<\/p>\n \u201cThey too were marched to a field, subjected to a mock execution and told never to come back.”<\/p>\n Then, Ingush\u00a0security officials were suspected, and a European Court agreed.\u00a0It is\u00a0likely\u00a0this\u00a0abduction was also\u00a0carried out by \u201clocal\u00a0Ingush security forces or by their proxies\u201d, Ms Sokrianskaia said, hoping\u00a0to discredit the protests and deter\u00a0journalists.<\/p>\n A statement from\u00a0the\u00a0interior\u00a0ministry of Ingushetia said they had been unable to verify the Amnesty claims. It also said Mr Kozlovsky had failed to report the matter to police.<\/p>\n Last night, Ingush leader Yunus-Bek Yevkurov suggested the incident could have been\u00a0a set-up to discredit his government.<\/p>\n