Released Chechen Fears ‘Secret Extradition’

Aslan Khanchukaev, an ethnic Chechen, was released on January 5, after serving his sentence in a Tbilisi prison.

Khanchukaev was in a group of 13 Chechens who were arrested by the Georgian border guards for illegal crossing the border and possession of arms in August, 2002.

In July, 2003 the Tbilisi District Court acquitted four of these accused men, including Khanchukaev, but they remained imprisoned after being accused of organizing disorder in the jail on October 4, 2002. Three other Chechens will be released in the following days, according to the Georgian media.

The detained Chechens organized a riot in the prison shortly after five of their compatriots were handed over to Russia by the Georgian authorities, in a protest against this extradition.

Last February the court also acquitted two others – Bekkhan Mulkoev and Husein Alkhanov, who were also part of the group of 13 Chechens detained by the Georgian border guards in 2002.

However, shortly after their release both of them mysteriously disappeared and on February 19 the Russian Federal Security Service reported that Russian law enforcers detained two Chechens – Mulkoev and Alkhanov – at the Georgian-Russian border. The news triggered protests among the Chechen community in Georgia, which accused the Georgian authorities of kidnapping two Chechens and secretly extraditing them to Russia.

On January 5, relatives of Aslan Khanchukaev appealed the Georgian human rights groups to closely watch the situation involving the released Chechens, as they fear, as they put it, “secret extraditions.”

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