Minister backs abuse

Officers of local law enforcement agencies stopped a regular bus from Nazran, Ingushetia, to Tarskoye (Angusht), North Ossetia, at a police checkpoint in Yuzhnyi, Prigorodnyi district, North Ossetia, on 8 November. All passengers in the bus were Ingush, a press release of the Human Rights Centre Memorial says.

According to eyewitnesses, the bus was stopped at the crossing of Pridorozhnaya St and Bulvarnaya St in Yuzhnyi by officers of the Iristonskii district police station. Six police officers entered the bus and demanded that passengers show their ID documents. (The passengers say that the policemen were drunk.) When the check was over, the bus was allowed to go.

At about 5.40 p.m. on the same day, a new bus with Ingush people going to Tarskoye was stopped at the same checkpoint. This time the police officers who introduced themselves as officers of the Iristonskii district police station numbered 12. Like in the first time, the policemen were drunk. They asked the passengers to show their ID documents. They were rude during the check and passengers think they were deliberately delaying the check procedure. When indignant passengers began to express their discontent with the actions of the police officers, those threatened the driver, Mr Ganiyev, with a submachine gun, ordered him to turn the bus, and convoyed it to the Yuzhnyi police station.

The police at the village station refused to receive the illegally detained people, but the officers who had conducted the detention insisted that a statement of detention should be drawn up. The argument between the policemen continued for about an hour. As a result, all those detained were allowed to go.

A bus with Ingush people resident in Tarskoye was again stopped at the checkpoint in Yuzhnyi at 7.40 a.m. on 9 November. A law enforcer began to check the people's documents. A passenger said that he would necessarily file a complaint about their actions. The passengers fulfilled their promise and went to Vladikavkaz to the republican Internal Affairs Ministry to notify Minister Sergei Arenin of the unlawful actions of his subordinates.

The minister listened to the applicants and said: "Measures will be toughened with respect to Ingush people." And right there, in their presence, he ordered some of his subordinates to put down the registration number of the bus and not to let anyone to North Ossetia. One passenger, Magomed Daskiyev, a collector from Ingushetia, asked Mr Arenin: "Why does an internal affairs minister give such orders?" The minister then said, "You shoot. I am responsible for order in the republic." Mr Daskiyev remarked that some Ingush were also resident in North Ossetia and that they were citizens of the Russian Federation. As a result, the minister personally seized Mr Daskiyev's documents and gave an order to deliver him to the Organised Crime Combating Department of North Ossetia's Internal Affairs Ministry, which was done by Colonel Baskayev. On the same day, Mr Daskiyev was allowed to go though.

Based on the above, residents of Tarskoye have filed a complaint to Rashid Nurgaliyev, Internal Affairs Minister of the Russian Federation; Dmitry Kozak, the Russian president's envoy to the South federal district; Vladimir Trubitsin, chief federal inspector for Ingushetia; Yermak Dzansolov, chief federal inspector for the Republic of North Ossetia; Mr Priimak, chief of the interregional department of the Federal Migration Service of Russia; and Mr Zhalo, chief of the Federal Security Service Department for the Republic of Ingushetia. In this complaint, they ask to look into the incident and take measures with respect to North Ossetia's Internal Affairs Minister Mr Arenin.