NALCHIK, Russia, 15 October 2005 — When Zarema Valgasova last saw her son, he was lying semiconscious, bleeding profusely from a horribly broken arm, with cigarette burns on his body — the result, she says, of torture by police after he was arrested.
In the wake of Thursday’s daylight attack by dozens of fighters on the southern Russian city of Nalchik, more than three dozen people — mostly men, mostly Muslim — have been caught up in the police dragnet looking for participants and conspirators in the assault that once again underscored the volatility of the Caucasus region.
Rights lawyers, and even the region’s officially sanctioned Islamic leader, say the campaign has caught up innocent, peaceful young Muslims, alienating and offending them as they rediscover their Muslim heritage.
Valgasova said her 26-year-old son, Daniil Khamukov, is a family man with two young children — and an observant Muslim. On Thursday morning, not long after gunfire began to reverberate around the city, he said goodbye to his wife and two young children and set off for work as a window dressing installer.
By 11 a.m., his battered, broken body was lying in the courtyard outside his home, bleeding from a compound arm fracture, Valgasova said. The body lay there for seven hours, she said; paramedics refused to help.
“They told us: ‘They say he’s one of the fighters. Let him die,”’ she said.
About 6 p.m., police came and collected Khamukov and took him to a local precinct house. Valgasova said she knows nothing more about his fate.
Larisa Dolgova, a human rights lawyer who represents Muslims in their complaints about harassment and torture, said Khamukov was arrested simply because he is an observant Muslim who does not practice his belief through official channels, for example, by attending worship services at Nalchik’s only authorized mosque.
Dolgova said even before Thursday’s attacks, relatives of detained Muslims had turned to her for help filing official, legal complaints about mistreatment at the hands of law enforcement officials.
“Moral, psychological, abusive attitudes, that’s what the authorities are showing toward observant Muslims,” she said.
Anas Pshikhachev, the official mufti for Kabardino-Balkariya, mildly criticized local authorities, saying, for example, that the decision to close all the city’s mosques except for his was a mistake.
He said some female university students had been accosted for wearing head scarves and some observant men confronted for wearing a certain style of beard associated with devout Muslims. But he said those were isolated incidents.
If police continue their harsh, blanket crackdown on Kabardino-Balkariya Muslims, it could lead to renewed violence against authorities, Dolgova said.
“Muslims will exercise their right to believe,” she said. “If not, I promise there will be mass disorder.”
