Key witness in Chechen extradition case 'was tortured'
Russian efforts to extradite a Chechen leader accused of war crimes suffered an embarrassing blow yesterday when their key witness told a British court he had been forced to lie after days of electric shock torture.
In a dramatic last-minute move, Akhmed Zakayev's defence lawyers produced a man the Russian government had claimed was his former bodyguard. Late last year, Duk-vakha Dashuev was paraded on television denouncing the former Chechen deputy prime minister and claiming he had ordered the kidnapping of two orthodox priests.
Yesterday - as the six-week extradition hearing was due to adjourn until September - defence lawyers called Mr Dashuev, having only just warned the opposing side.
At Bow Street magistrates' court in London he described how he had been forced to make the allegations after military secret services held him in a pit for six days and subjected him to beatings and torture. "I had no other choice. I couldn't take any more torture. Morning and night I was being beaten. I am a human being,'' Mr Dashuev said.
The 35-year-old's identity had initially been hidden from Mr Zakayev's legal team by the Russians, who claimed he was in fear of the former Chechen leader. Blacking his name out on his statement, the Russians also failed to reveal that he had been incarcerated when he made the damning allegation.
Edward Fitzgerald QC said: "It is an extraordinary situation ... Just imagine in England if someone had to make a statement and you put him on television while in custody. The case would be dismissed as an abuse of process straight away. This really is the darkest days of Kremlin justice coming back.''
Mr Zakayev - who was once considered a moderate in Moscow - was arrested at Heathrow airport in December after arriving from Denmark, where the Russians had tried unsuccessfully to extradite him.
They want to try the former actor and friend of Vanessa Redgrave on allegations of murder and torture, accusing him of being a terrorist who ordered the deaths of more than 300 police and civilians.
But the 44-year-old denies the charges, insisting they are a political ploy to discredit him. His life would be in danger should he be returned, his lawyers insist.
Yesterday, Mr Dashuev told the court he had not been a bodyguard but was director of security at the Ministry of Culture during the short-lived Chechen government. In November, he said, he was stopped at a checkpoint in Grozny and bundled into the back of a military vehicle by armed and masked men.
He said he was taken to a military base, where he was thrown in to a covered pit. During the next six days, still bound and blindfolded, he was interrogated about Mr Zakayev and asked if he was a member of the Djamaat Islamic battalion, which he denied.
Eventually he signed documents and repeated the allegations for television cameras, he said. After a further two months in prison he was taken before a court, where an old school friend who was now in the secret services warned him he was being released so that he could be killed. Mr Dashuev fled the country and later contacted Mr Zakayev's lawyers.
Yesterday Khawar Qureshi, for the Russian authorities, asked for an adjournment before cross-examination because the witness had been produced without warning.