Public prosecutors searching human rights activists' houses trying to find Ulman

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on June 14 the North-Caucasian Regional Military Court sentenced in absentia Eduard Ulman, a special troop's officer, to 14 years of imprisonment for a murder of six residents of Chechnya. The court also sentenced his subordinates Alexander Kalaganskiy and Vladimir Voevodin to 11 and 12 years of imprisonment, accordingly, and the only defendant who was present in the courtroom Alexei Perelevskiy - to 9 years of imprisonment. The court defined the strict custody mode for all of them.

The whereabouts of the three suddenly disappeared defendants - Eduard Ulman, Alexander Kalaganskiy and Vladimir Voevodin - have not been defined so far.

On June 18, Roman Krzhechkovskiy, Ulman's advocate, filed a cassation complaint against the verdict passed to Ulman's group.

Chechen Ombudsman Nurdi Nukhazhiev has stated that the Office of Public Prosecutor is putting pressure on representatives of the victims in Ulman's case thinking that they have kidnapped and are detaining the convicted special fighters announced into search.

"On Thursday, June, 21, Minkail Enzhiev, head of the Human Rights Centre of the Chechen Republic, was summoned to the Public Prosecutor's Office and informed by the inspector that the latter had a written prescription of the Public Prosecutor of the Voroshilovskiy District of Rostov-on-Don to check Enzhiev's possible involvement in kidnapping (murder) or complicity in kidnapping of Ulman's group," Mr Nukhazhiev told journalists in Grozny.

The Public Prosecutor's Office has been prescribed to check up on the same issue 16 close relatives of the casualties, and also to inspect the inhabited and uninhabited premises of all the above victims, their relatives, friends and fellow villagers for detection of possible hiding places, where the kidnapped Ulman, Voevodin and Kalaganskiy can be kept.