Report accuses Chechnya of torturing gay detainees

SENIOR officials in Chechnya humiliated inmates during visits to detention facilities where gay people were being allegedly held and tortured, a new report claims.

A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, published yesterday, said it had spoken to six former detainees who claimed Chechen officials, including two high-level ones, visited the unofficial prisons and humiliated inmates.

Victims of the purge have told how they were stripped naked, beaten with pipes and electrocuted.

“They turn the knob, electric current hits you, and you start shaking,” one former detainee, who remained anonymous, told HRW. “Finally, you faint, it all goes dark, but when you come to your senses, they start all over again.”

The shocking testimony of abuse in the Russian federal republic follows claims first made in April that men were being detained because of their sexuality. The crackdown is understood to have seen more than 100 men suspected of being gay abducted, tortured and in some cases killed.

Last month, the newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported that gay men in the North Caucasus region had been tortured and killed by police. Associated Press also spoke to two victims of the crackdown who supported the claims.

Although Chechen officials have denied the reports, federal investigators have been dispatched to conduct an investigation. President Vladimir Putin has assured the country’s human rights ombudsman that he would speak with its law enforcement officials.