20:40, 11 November 2005

Antiterrorist Centre to be reorganised

The Antiterrorist Centre (ATC) of the Internal Affairs Ministry of the Chechen Republic (the former presidential security service of Chechnya) will soon cease to exist.

The ATC is going to be drastically reorganised. It is planned to establish two interior battalions on the basis of this law enforcement structure, a source with Chechnya's law enforcement agencies said.

The issue of structural changes in this service has practically been decided on in full, according to the interlocutor. Reform of the Antiterrorist Centre into subdivisions of the Internal Affairs Ministry's interior troops must take place in the near future.

The majority of Antiterrorist Centre officers are former rebels. The idea to win participants in Chechnya's armed resistance movement over belonged to the late president of the Chechen Republic, Akhmat Kadyrov. Once they laid down arms, rebels were amnestied and practically at once became members of divisions of the security service. In Chechnya, they still call its officers "Kadyrovtsy" in spite that it has been renamed as the Antiterrorist Centre.

Author: Sultan Abubakarov, CK correspondent