Russia captures Chechen mountain area

Andrei Babitsky, whose mysterious disappearance in Chechnya earlier this month alarmed the international community, could face up to two years in jail, officials said.

Russia, which is under heavy international pressure to allow independent observers into Chechnya to investigate allegations of human rights abuses, has agreed to let the Council of Europe’s Human Rights representative visit the region on Sunday.

Interfax news agency said Russian troops had taken full control of the Itum-Kale district in the southern reaches of the Argun gorge not far from the border with Georgia. The gorge is the main remaining stronghold of the Chechen rebels.

It said up to 40 fighters had been killed in the fighting.

Further North, Russian troops were also consolidating their grip on high ground overlooking Shatoi, scene of fierce battles in recent days, Interfax said.

Russian warplanes made more than 70 sorties over Chechnya in the past 24 hours, hitting anti-aircraft systems and other rebel targets in the Argun and Vedeno Gorges, Interfax said.

The rebels’ internet website kavkaz.org confirmed the Russian gains and the intensive air strikes, which it said had caused widespread civilian casualties in the Shatoi area.

The website also said the rebels had ambushed and destroyed a 300-strong detachment of Russian troops near the village of Khorsenoy. The report could not be independently confirmed.

Meanwhile, The Council of Europe’s Human Rights commissioner Alvaro Gil-Robles is expected to fly on Sunday morning to the North Caucasus, where he will visit refugee camps in Ingushetia and the Chechen capital Grozny, Itar-Tass news agency said.

Russia’s own Commissioner for Human Rights in Chechnya, Vladimir Kalamanov, will accompany Gil-Robles, it said.

Gil-Robles’s visit coincides with controversy over video footage of Russian soldiers piling the bodies of Chechens into a mass grave.

U.S. President Bill Clinton on Friday said the footage and other reports of human rights abuses were “very troubling”.

“I think it is imperative for the Russians to allow the appropriate international agencies unfettered access to do the right inquiries, to find out what really went on and to deal with it in an appropriate way,” Clinton said in Washington.

Russian officials said the tape, released by Germany’s N24 Television, could not be accepted as testimony of torture.

The respected Russian daily Izvestia said it was its reporter, rather than a German, who had shot the film. N24 later said its reporter had stood by as the film was shot by a Russian cameraman. It added that the pictures did not prove whether any atrocity had actually taken place.