AP News, January 15th, 2007
More than 500 armed militants in Chechnya and other parts of Russia's troubled North Caucasus surrendered to authorities as part of an amnesty that expired Monday, an official said.
Authorities proposed the amnesty last summer as part of efforts to secure peace and normal life in Chechnya. The offer promised that surrendering militants would avoid prosecution unless they were suspected of grave crimes such as murder, rape or terrorism.
An official with the office of President Vladimir Putin's envoy to the southern federal district told The Associated Press that more than 500 militants had turned themselves in. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Among those surrendering over the weekend, officials said, were two former bodyguards and the driver of Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, a rebel who was Chechnya's acting president in 1996-97 and was killed by a car bomb in 2004 in Qatar.
News agencies cited Russia's national anti-terrorism committee as saying that 546 militants have surrendered since the amnesty was announced in July, and quoted Chechnya's powerful Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov as saying militants should not get another chance.
"I believe it is the last amnesty," Kadyrov said, according to Interfax.
"Naturally, people should be forgiven and return to peaceful life," he was quoted as saying, but he added that the remaining militants "are enemies of the people, enemies of Islam."
The Kremlin has offered several similar amnesties in the past _ with varying results. The latest proposal followed the July death of Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, who was behind the worst terror attacks that have plagued the country during 12 years of nearly constant conflict in Chechnya.
According to rights groups, many of those who surrender join the ranks of Chechnya's security forces, which have been accused of involvement in abductions, torture and extrajudicial killings targeting civilians.
Large-scale battles in Chechnya ended years ago, but rebels continue to stage regular hit-and-run raids against federal forces and local allied paramilitaries. Militant attacks have also become increasingly common in other republics in the North Caucasus.
Kadyrov and other officials eager to show that normal life is returning in Chechnya got a boost Monday with the restoration of passenger rail service on a line through Chechnya that was diverted to a more circuitous route more than a decade ago.
A celebration was held at the station in Gudermes, Chechnya's second-largest city, when the first train arrived from Rostov-on-Don, northwest of Chechnya, en route to Makhachkala in the Dagestan region to the east. The train stopped going through Chechnya in 1994, the year the first post-Soviet war in the region began.
Passenger Nura Magomadova said the change shortened the trip by a day and a half. "God grant that we will be met with music and flowers, like today, and not with stones and weapons like 10 years ago," she said.
Train service between Moscow and Chechnya's capital, Grozny, resumed in November 2002.
