RUSSIAN SOCIETY UNDER CONTROL Abuses in the Fight Against Extremism and Terrorism
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Civic Assistance Committee RUSSIAN SOCIETY UNDER CONTROL Abuses in the fight against extremism and terrorism of person. Article 4: No one shall be held in slavery Article 1: All human beings are born free and equal or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms. Article 5: No one shall be subjected to in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Article 6: Everyone has the right to recognition spirit of brotherhood. Article 2: Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, everywhere as a person before the law. Article 7: All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimi- without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, nation to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination. Article 8: Everyone has the right to an effective rem- basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person edy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty. by law. Article 9: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, Article 3: Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security July 2009 – Ref. 525a © http://www.hroniki.info/ © RUSSIAN SOCIETY UNDER CONTROL Abuses in the fight against extremism and terrorism Introduction .......................................................................................................................................................................... 1 I Mechanisms used in the fight against terrorism and extremism .............................................................................. 4 I.1 The fight against terrorism ....................................................................................................................................... 4 I.1.1 The dynamics of changes to legislation ................................................................................................................... 4 I.1.2 The Law of March 2006 .......................................................................................................................................... 5 I.1.3 The grey areas in the Law of March 2006 ............................................................................................................... 5 I.1.4 The results of the fight against terrorism ................................................................................................................. 7 I.2 List of terrorist organisations in Russia ................................................................................................................... 8 I.3 Anti-terrorist measures in the North Caucasus ........................................................................................................ 9 I.4 International cooperation in the fight against terrorism ........................................................................................ 11 1.4.1 Cooperation within the CIS in the fight against terrorism ..................................................................................... 14 1.4.2 The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) ................................................................................................... 15 I.5 Abuses committed in the fight against extremism ................................................................................................. 17 II “Keeping order” in the North Caucasus ............................................................................................................... 21 II.1 The North Caucasus: the spreading of conflict beyond Chechnya ........................................................................ 21 II.1.1 Chechnya: increasing numbers of fabricated criminal cases on charges of terrorism ........................................... 21 II.1.2 Ingushetia .............................................................................................................................................................. 24 II.1.3 Kabardino-Balkaria ............................................................................................................................................... 26 II. 2 Two symbolic cases: Zara Murtazaliyeva and Zaurbek Talhigov ......................................................................... 27 II.2.1 The Zara Murtazaliyeva case ................................................................................................................................. 27 II.2.2 The Zaurbek Talhigov case ................................................................................................................................... 29 III Persecution of Muslim organisation accused of extremism .................................................................................. 31 III.1 The Islamic Jamaat (Tatarstan) case ...................................................................................................................... 31 III.2 Persecution of alleged members of the Hizb ut-Tahrir movement: importing the theory of an international enemy as a catalyst of international cooperation ................................................................... 39 III.2.1 The Alisher Usmanov case, Kazan (Tatarstan), 2004–2005 .................................................................................. 42 III.2.2 The Hizb ut-Tahrir case, Kazan (Tatarstan), 2006–2009 ...................................................................................... 44 III.2.3 The Hizb ut-Tahrir case, Chuvashia, 2006–2007 .................................................................................................. 51 III.2.4 The Hizb ut-Tahrir cases, Naberezhniye Chelny, 2004–2007 ............................................................................... 52 III.2.5 The domestic gas pipeline explosion case, Bugulma (Tatarstan), 2005 ................................................................ 61 III.3 The cases concerning followers of Saïd Nursi and publications of his works – a typical example of the improper use of anti-extremist legislation ..................................................................... 65 III.4 Other examples of the use of “classic” articles of the Criminal Code against Muslim organisations. ................. 68 III.4.1 The case of “the Russian imam” from Pyatigorsk, Anton Stepanenko, 2006–2007 ............................................. 68 III.4.2 The Jamaat Tablig case, Astrakhan Province, 2007 .............................................................................................. 69 IV Other targets in the fight against extremism .......................................................................................................... 71 IV.1 The Grozny–Moscow train-explosion case ........................................................................................................... 71 IV.2 The cases of the exhibitions in the Andrei Sakharov Museum and Civic Centre ................................................. 73 V Conclusions and recommendations ....................................................................................................................... 76 APPENDICES ................................................................................................................................................................... 83 100 / Titre du rapport – FIDH Introduction From 2000 onwards, numerous human rights violations have been committed in Russia within the framework of measures meant to fight terrorism and extremism. The events in question need to be viewed in the context of the Russian government’s policy of introducing a so-called “dictatorship of the law”. The fights against terrorism and extremism in Russia have fairly blurred contours and different histories. The fight against terrorism in Russia began even before the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001: it dates back to the autumn of 1999 with the unleashing of the second Chechen war, waged under the slogan of anti-terrorism. As a result of changes in the international community’s attitude to events in Russia due to the tragedies in the Dubrovka Street theatre (2002) and Beslan (2004), and of the spreading of the effects of the Chechen conflict to neighbouring republics of the North Caucasus, the fight against terrorism has spread to the entire territory of Russia, taking on new forms. Frequently, real anti-terrorist measures are substituted by mere imita- tions thereof: charges are fabricated against members of so-called “non-traditional”1 Muslim communities in various different regions of Russia, particularly in the Central and Volga-Urals Regions and West Siberia. In most cases, the courts find the accused guilty and sentence them to imprisonment. These punitive measures are accompanied by an intensive public-relations campaign that whips up and sustains fear of the Islamist threat supposedly coming from the North Caucasus and from Central Asia, in particular from Uzbekistan, with which Russia has in recent years