Posted on 03/16/2005 2:54:39 PM PST by lizol
Soldiers’ Mothers Urge Russia to Give Maskhadov’s Body to Relatives Created: 16.03.2005 11:00 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 11:00 MSK, 14 hours 28 minutes ago
MosNews
A Russian human rights organization, the Union of Soldiers’ Mothers Committees, has said the body of the killed Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov should be handed over to his relatives.
The Russian authorities do not plan to hand over the body, saying Maskhadov was a terrorist. According to a recently approved law, the bodies of killed terrorists do not have to be handed over to their relatives.
The organization’s executive secretary, Valentina Melnikova, was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying she received a letter via e-mail from Maskhadov’s widow Qusama, son Anzor and daughter Fatima asking the organization to help them get the body. A similar letter written by Maskhadov’s family to the leaders of world states was earlier published on a separatist Web site.
“We think that even if the Russian authorities consider Maskhadov their enemy, they might have handed over his body. It is over, he is killed, one does not wage war against the dead,” Melnikova said. “Besides, the authorities consider him a terrorist but there was no court hearing and nobody has pronounced any verdict against Maskhadov,” an organization official was quoted by the agency as saying.
The Soldier’s Mothers do not yet know who to address and who makes decisions on such issues. “So far, we do not know who could be the addressee of our appeal other than society and journalists,” Melnikova said.
Several other Russian human rights organizations said on Monday that Maskhadov’s body should have been handed over to his relatives. They called the authorities’ decision “disgraceful”.
Deputy Prosecutor General Nikolai Shepel was quoted by the agency as saying Maskhadov will be buried in an unmarked grave “as an active participant of an international terrorist network, without notifying his relatives and handing over his body”.
According to official information, Maskhadov was killed on March 8 in the Chechen village of Tolstoi-Yurt.
Send the body back in the same condition Russian bodies are returned to their families.
I agree , they shouldn't hand back the body
the relatives will try to make it a martyr location ,
young aspiring terrorists would go meditate on doing evil
anti-infidel deeds in the location of this mans internment.
Better that his remains just disappear. We in the West should take a lesson from this policy...
They should give it back, after they've stuffed it with pig guts.
Sweets to the sweet.
Soak it in pig urine and drop it off at the family's doorstep (via the cargo bay door of a high-flying airplane.)
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