Report links Russians to up to 300 kidnappings; prime minister criticized. A top official in Chechnya’s Moscow-backed government said yesterday that Russian soldiers there may be responsible for as many as 300 kidnappings of civilians last year – but that he saw nothing unusual in that. “Yes, there are crimes, there are kidnappings, and some of them involve servicemen,” Chechen Prime Minister Anatoly Popov said at a Moscow news conference, citing statistics from a report by Chechen prosecutor Vladimir Kravchenko. “This is not a classified report, but the results of the prosecutors’ work in 2002. In fact, it indicated about 300 abductions of residents in which soldiers might have been involved. I see nothing extraordinary about that.” There were more than 200 other kidnappings in which soldiers are not suspected, he said. Vyacheslav Izmailov, a military correspondent with Novaya Gazeta and one of Russia’s top experts on Chechnya, decried Popov’s statement linking abductions to federal forces. Full Story
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