NOVAYA GAZETA RUNS POLITKOVSKAYA’S UNFINISHED LAST ARTICLES

Novaya gazeta, in its October 10 issue, published sections of the unfinished articles that Anna Politkovskaya was working on at the time of her murder, which focused on people who had been jailed and tortured in Chechnya after they were accused of being terrorists. In one section, she quoted from a letter written by the mothers of a group of young Chechens who had been sent to “corrective colonies” after being charged with terrorism.

“In essence, these corrective colonies have turned into concentration camps for Chechen convicts,” the letter stated. “They are subjected to discrimination on national grounds. They are not let out of one-person chambers and solitary confinement punishment cells. A majority, or practically all of them, are convicted in fabricated ‘cases’ that are not based on proof. Placed in harsh conditions, subjected to humiliation, they are developing hatred toward everything. This is a whole army that will return to us with damaged fortunes, with perverted ideas.” “Honestly, I am afraid of their hatred,” Politkovskaya wrote in reference to these young Chechens jailed for terrorism, adding that they would eventually turn into genuine terrorists and extremists.

Politkovskaya’s unfinished articles also contained a Chechen detainee’s graphic description of the torture he was subjected to after the Ukrainian authorities deported him from Crimea to Russia, where he was jailed on terrorism charges, as well as photographs of torture victims.