Burying the Evidence: The Botched Investigation into a Mass Grave in Chechnya

Russian authorities have literally buried evidence of extra-judicial executions in Chechnya, said Human Rights Watch. In this 24-page report, the organization documents the Russian government's botched investigation of a mass grave site discovered in late February 2001. This week senior European Union and United Nations officials are preparing for meetings with President Putin in Moscow. Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov will be meeting Secretary of State Colin Powell in Washington on Friday, May 18. Human Rights Watch called on the international community to press Russia at these meetings for a new investigation and for the implementation of last month's U.N. resolution on Chechnya. In late February, fifty-one bodies were found in Dachny, an abandoned village less than one kilometer from the main Russian military base in Chechnya. According to the report, of the nineteen victims whose corpses were identified by relatives, sixteen were last seen as Russian federal forces took them into custody. Two weeks later, the authorities buried the rest of the bodies without prior notice and without performing adequate autopsies or collecting crucial evidence that would have helped to identify the perpetrators.