AP News, January 15th, 2007
More than 500 militants in Chechnya and other parts of Russia's troubled North Caucasus mountain region have surrendered to authorities as part of an amnesty that expired Monday, an official said.
Authorities offered the amnesty last summer as part of efforts to restore peace and some measure of normal life in Chechnya. They promised that militants who surrendered would not be prosecuted 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 region 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 who surrendered over the weekend, officials said, were a driver and two former bodyguards for Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, a rebel who was Chechnya's acting president in 1996-97. He was killed by a car bomb in 2004 in Qatar.
News agencies, citing Russia's national anti-terrorism committee, reported that 546 militants have surrendered since the amnesty was announced in July. The Interior Ministry branch in Dagestan, adjacent to Chechnya, said 40 militants had surrendered there.
Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya's powerful prime minister, said the militants should not get another chance at turning themselves in, Interfax reported. "I believe it is the last amnesty," he said, according to Interfax.
He called the remaining militants "enemies of the people, enemies of Islam," the news service reported.
The Kremlin has offered several similar amnesties in the past _ with varying results. The latest proposal followed the death in July of the Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, responsible for many of the worst terror attacks to hit Russia since 1994, the year of the first post-Soviet war in the region.
According to human rights groups, many militants who surrender join the ranks of Chechnya's security forces, which have themselves been accused of involvement in abductions, torture and extrajudicial killings of civilians.
Large-scale battles in Chechnya ended years ago, but rebels still stage regular hit-and-run raids against federal forces and allied local paramilitary militias. Militant attacks have also become increasingly common in other republics in the North Caucasus.
Kadyrov and other officials, who are eager to show that normal life is returning in Chechnya, on Monday welcomed the restoration of passenger rail service on a line through Chechnya that was diverted to a safer and more circuitious route in 1994.
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 east to Makhachkala in Russia's Dagestan region.
Passenger Nura Magomadova said reverting to the old route 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.
