TORTURE REPORTED FOR YEAR END.

The Geneva-based Organisation mondiale contre la torture (World Organization Against Torture) said on January 10 that it had been informed of “the extra-judicial killing of seven civilians by the Russian armed forces in Chechnya during the last week of 2002.” In several of these cases the Russian forces had left body parts such as severed heads near the victims’ residences, “it is thought in order to increase the level of fear already being felt by the Chechen population.”