[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 28 (Tuesday, March 14, 2000)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E300-E301]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     THE ORDEAL OF ANDREI BABITSKY

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, March 14, 2000

  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, a small bit of good news has 
emerged from the tortured region of Chechnya, where the Russian 
military is killing, looting, and terrorizing the population under the 
guise of an ``anti-terrorism operation.''
  Andrei Babitsky, the Radio Liberty correspondent who had disappeared 
in Chechnya in early February after Russian authorities had 
``exchanged'' him to unknown persons in return for some Russian 
prisoners of war, has emerged in Dagestan and is now in Moscow 
recuperating from his ordeal. Mr. Babitsky's courageous reporting from 
the besieged city of Grozny had infuriated Russian military 
authorities, and he was arrested in mid-January and charged with 
``participating in an unlawful armed formation.''
  Prior to his release, Mr. Babitsky had spent time in the notorious 
Chernokozovo ``filtration'' camp where the Russian military has been 
detaining and torturing Chechens suspected of aiding the resistance. 
Following his arrival in Moscow, Mr. Babitsky provided a harrowing 
account of his incarceration at the Chernokozovo prison, and especially 
the savage treatment of his fellow prisoners. It is another graphic 
reminder that for all the fine words and denials coming out of Moscow, 
the Russian military has been conducting a brutal

[[Page E301]]

business that makes a mockery of the Geneva Conventions and the code of 
military conduct stipulated in the 1994 Budapest Document of the OSCE.
  Mr. Speaker, last month President Clinton stated that Russia's Acting 
President Putin is a man the United States ``can do business with.'' 
With this in mind, I would suggest for the Record excerpts from Mr. 
Babitsky's interview with an NTV reporter in Russia. If Mr. Putin is 
aware of the state of affairs at Chernokozovo and condoning it, I would 
submit that our business with Mr. Putin should be extremely limited. If 
he is not aware of the truth, then his authority over Russia is a 
chimera, and we might better deal with the real rulers of Russia.
  Babitsky's statement follows:

      [From Hero of the Day NTV Program, 7:40 p.m., Feb. 29, 2000]

       Interview With Radio Liberty Correspondent Andrei Babitsky

       Babitsky. On the 16th I tried to leave the city of Grozny 
     through the settlement of Staraya Sunzha, a suburb of Grozny 
     which at the time was divided into two parts. One part was 
     controlled by federal troops and the other by the Chechen 
     home guard.
       I entered the territory controlled by the federals and it 
     was there that I was recognized. I was identified as a 
     journalist, I immediately presented my documents. All the 
     subsequent claims that I was detained as a person who had to 
     be identified are not quite clear to me. I had my passports 
     with me, my accreditation card of
       Then I was taken to Khankala. Not what journalists who had 
     covered the first war regarded as Khankala but to an open 
     field. There was an encampment there consisting of trucks 
     used as their office by army intelligence officers. Two of my 
     cassettes that I had filmed in Grozny were taken from me. 
     They contained unique frames. I think those were the last 
     video pictures ever taken by anyone before Grozny was 
     stormed. Those, again, were pictures of thousands of peaceful 
     civilians many of whom, as we now know, were killed by 
     federal artillery shells.
       I spent two nights in Khankala, in the so-called Avtozak, a 
     truck converted into a prison cell. On the third day I was 
     taken to what the Chechens call a filtration center, the 
     preliminary detention center in Chernokozovo.
       I believe I am the only journalist of those who covered the 
     first and the second Chechen wars who has seen a filtration 
     center from the inside. I must say that all these horrors 
     that we have heard from Chechens who had been there have been 
     confirmed. Everything that we read about concentration camps 
     of the Stalin period, all that we know about the German 
     camps, all this is present there.
       The first three days that I spent there, that was the 18th, 
     19th and the 20th, beatings continued round the clock. I 
     never thought that I would hear such a diversity of 
     expressions of human pain. These were not just screams, these 
     were screams of every possible tonality and depth, these were 
     screams of most diverse pain. Different types of beatings 
     cause a different reaction.
       Q. Are you saying that you got this treatment?
       A. No, that was the treatment meted out to others. I was 
     fortunate, it was established at once that I am a journalist, 
     true, nobody knew what type of journalist I was. Everybody 
     there were surprised that a journalist happened to be there. 
     In principle, the people there cannot be described as 
     intellectuals. They decided that there was nothing special 
     about this, that such things do happen in a war. As a 
     journalist I was ``registered'', as they say, only once. They 
     have this procedure there. When a new detainee is being taken 
     from his cell to the investigator he is made to crawl all the 
     way under a rain of blows with rubber sticks.
       It hurts but one can survive it. This is a light treatment 
     as compared with the tortures to which Chechens are subjected 
     day and night, those who are suspected of collaborating with 
     the illegal armed formations. There are also cases when some 
     testimony is beaten out of detainees.
       Q. What is the prison population there?
       A. In my opinion . . . I was in cell No. 17 during the 
     first three days. In that cell there were 13 inhabitants of 
     the village Aberdykel (sp.--FNS). Most of them were young. 
     Judging by their stories, I am not an investigator and I 
     could not collect a sufficiently full database, but in such 
     an atmosphere one very rarely doubts the veracity of what you 
     are told. Mostly these were young men who had nothing to do 
     with the war. They were really common folk. They were 
     treating everything happening around them as a calamity but 
     they were not taking any sides. They were simply waiting for 
     this calamity to pass either in this direction or that 
     direction.
       Beatings as a method of getting testimony. This is 
     something that, unfortunately, is very well known in Russian 
     and not only Russian history and tradition. But I must say 
     that apart from everything, in my opinion, in all this 
     torture, as it seemed to me, a large part is due to sheer 
     sadism. In other words, an absolutely unwarranted torturing 
     of people.
       For instance, I heard . . . You know, you really can't see 
     this because all this happens outside of your cell. But the 
     type of screams leaves not doubt about what is happening. You 
     know, this painful reaction. For two hours a woman was 
     tortured on the 20th or the 19th. She was tortured, I have no 
     other word to explain what was happening. That was not a 
     hysteria. I am not a medic but I believe that we all know 
     what a hysteria is. There were screams indicting that a 
     person was experiencing unbearable pain, and for a long 
     period of time.

     

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