TITLE: INTERVIEW WITH RADIO LIBERTY CORRESPONDENT ANDREI BABITSKY

(HERO OF THE DAY NTV PROGRAM, 19:40, FEBRUARY 29, 2000)

SOURCE: FEDERAL NEWS SERVICE

Anchor: Good evening, this is the Hero of the Day program. A

few days ago, here in this studio, I spoke with the wife of the

journalist Andrei Babitsky, Lyudmila. When we were parting, I told

her: "Lyuda, let's hope for the best. For some reason I believe

that Andrei is alive and will return home soon."

It had so happened that only a few days after my talk with the

wife of Valentin Vlasov he returned to Moscow from his Chechen

captivity.

I am very glad that this time, too, a similar thing has

happened. Andrei returned home last night. After his difficult

previous days he could not come to the studio. That is why I am

offering you an interview that was recorded last night by my

colleague Airat Shavaliyev immediately after Babitsky's return to

Moscow. You have heard a part of this conversation in the news

bulletin. Now I am offering you a fuller version.

Babitsky: I will be quite brief. As you know, I have just

returned. The entire family is not sleeping.

Well, on the 2nd, I believe it was February, investigator

Chernyavsky of the Naursky Prosecutor's Office signed a resolution

on my release from detention. This was done in substitution of ...

Shavaliyev: Excuse me, but could you start with the very first

day?

A: Oh, that is such a long story. Then I will be very

fragmentary. On the 16th I tried to leave the city of Grozny

through the settlement of Staraya Sunzha, a suburb of Grozny which

at the time was divided into two parts. One part was controlled by

federal troops and the other by the Chechen home guard.

I entered the territory controlled by the federals and it was

there that I was recognized. I was identified as a journalist, I

immediately presented my documents. All the subsequent claims that

I was detained as a person who had to be identified are not quite

clear to me. I had my passports with me, my accreditation card of

a foreign correspondent.

Then I was taken to Khankala. Not what journalists who had

covered the first war regarded as Khankala but to an open field.

There was an encampment there consisting of trucks used as their

office by army intelligence officers. Two of my cassettes that I

had filmed in Grozny were taken from me. They contained unique

frames. I think those were the last video pictures ever taken by

anyone before Grozny was stormed. Those, again, were pictures of

thousands of peaceful civilians many of whom, as we now know, were

killed by federal artillery shells.

I spent two nights in Khankala, in the so-called Avtozak, a

truck converted into a prison cell. On the third day I was taken to

what the Chechens call a filtration center, the preliminary

detention center in Chernokozovo.

I believe I am the only journalist of those who covered the

first and the second Chechen wars who has seen a filtration center

from the inside. I must say that all these horrors that we have

heard from Chechens who had been there have been confirmed.

Everything that we read about concentration camps of the Stalin

period, all that we know about the German camps, all this is

present there.

The first three days that I spent there, that was the 18th,

19th and the 20th, beatings continued round the clock. I never

thought that I would hear such a diversity of expressions of human

pain. These were not just screams, these were screams of every

possible tonality and depth, these were screams of most diverse

pain. Different types of beatings cause a different reaction.

Q: Are you saying that you got this treatment?

A: No, that was the treatment meted out to others. I was

fortunate, it was established at once that I am a journalist, true,

nobody knew what type of a journalist I was. Everybody there were

surprised that a journalist happened to be there. In principle, the

people there cannot be described as intellectuals. They decided

that there was nothing special about this, that such things do

happen in a war. As a journalist I was "registered", as they say,

only once. They have this procedure there. When a new detainee is

being taken from his cell to the investigator he is made to crawl

all the way under a rain of blows with rubber sticks.

It hurts but one can survive it. This is a light treatment as

compared with the tortures to which Chechens are subjected day and

night, those who are suspected of collaborating with the illegal

armed formations. There are also cases when some testimony is

beaten out of detainees.

Q: What is the prison population there?

A: In my opinion... I was in cell No. 17 during the first

three days. In that cell there were 13 inhabitants of the village

Aberdykel (sp.--FNS). Most of them were young. Judging by their

stories, I am not an investigator and I could not collect a

sufficiently full database, but in such an atmosphere one very

rarely doubts the veracity of what you are told. Mostly these were

young men who had nothing to do with the war. They were really

common folk. They were treating everything happening around them as

a calamity but they were not taking any sides. They were simply

waiting for this calamity to pass either in this direction or that

direction.

Beatings as a method of getting testimony. This is something

that, unfortunately, is very well known in Russian and not only

Russian history and tradition. But I must say that apart from

everything, in my opinion, in all this torture, as it seemed to me,

a large part is due to sheer sadism. In other words, an absolutely

unwarranted torturing of people.

For instance, I heard ... You know, you really can't see this

because all this happens outside of your cell. But the type of the

screams leaves no doubt about what is happening. You know, this

painful reaction. For two hours a woman was tortured on the 20th or

the 19th. She was tortured, I have no other word to explain what

was happening. That was not a hysteria. I am not a medic but I

believe that we all know what a hysteria is. There were screams

indicting that a person was experiencing unbearable pain, and for

a long period of time.

On the 21st, for instance, a man was tortured for several

hours.

Q: On the 21st of what?

A: On the 21st of February. No, I am confused with dates. I

left Grozny in January and that was in January. A man was tortured.

He was told that something would be cut off. He was dragged along

the corridor. On the third or fourth day, I do not know in

connection with what, such rampant beatings, such maniacal, sick

beatings, unjustified beatings, beatings unjustified by third

degree interrogations, suddenly began to subside. There were fewer

beatings during the day. This nightmare shifted to the evening,

then the night.

It seems to me that my presence there must have played a role.

You see, some sort of officials began to appear and ask me about my

attitude to what was happening there, if I was subjected to

beatings. Then very definite officials began to appear, the

Prosecutor of Naursky district, the Prosecutor of Chechnya. A

person who introduced himself as a member of the commission for the

release of unlawfully detained servicemen in Chechnya came to me on

the 31st. He said that the Chechen side, through Magomed

Khochilayev, a Dagestani, on behalf of Turpal Atgeriyev, a field

commander, had publicly suggested to swap me for Russian prisoners

of war on condition that I am immediately released.

He asked me if I was ready for such an exchange. I replied

that I was not prepared to give an immediate answer because I was

afraid that my professional reputation could be hurt. I was

suspected of assisting unlawful armed formations and for this

reason this was a difficult matter for me. I was told that this did

not present a problem, that this could be somehow resolved. I said

that I did not know how this could be resolved. I said that in

principle I could not quite understand this variant from a legal

point of view but if somebody could gain freedom as a result of

this, the more so that I had hoped that Turpal Atgeriyev, with whom

I was familiar, proceeded from humanitarian considerations, then I

was ready for this.

I said I was prepared for this and at the same time I refused

to admit being guilty of anything. As an innocent Russian citizen

I was prepared to take part in the exchange.

On the second, as I said, I was released from detention. I was

ready to go home when a vehicle, popularly called a "tablet", drove

up and I was taken to Gudermes.

I was held in a militia precinct there. The next day, at about

eleven, I was brought out and here, I thought, some mistake was

made with the route and I would be driven out through Dagestan. But

I was taken to a locality that I did not recognize. I saw the road

only through a small barred window. Then a short, skinny young man

came up. I believe he looked like a conman. "I am Igor," he told

me. "Remember, you signed a statement about your readiness to take

part in an exchange." "Yes," I said, "I did sign such a statement

but since then certain events have taken place. I have been a free

man for less than 24 hours. Yet, I was under guard. I regard this

as arbitrariness, I believe that the persons guilty of this should

be punished. Besides, it was said that the exchange would take

place not earlier than after seven days. So far only three days

have passed. I thought that I would have a chance to meet with my

wife." In short, I told them that they were coercing me.

They tried to explain to me that I am acting hypocritically.

I said that this did not matter. I told them that I had stated my

attitude to them and was prepared for any further development. You

know, there were five men with submachineguns around me and I

realized that in those circumstances there was nothing that I could

do.

I was handed over to some unidentified persons. I do not know

who they are to this day. This happened as follows. I got into a

vehicle, a mask was put on my head. I was brought to a village and

for three weeks, from the 3rd to the 23rd, I was made to live in a

locked house where I was guarded by two persons. I do suspect who

those people were. But this is a very complex and long story. There

are many versions and each has its proof. But I can't outline them

briefly.

From Chechnya I was taken to Makhachkala in the trunk of a

car. My escorts insisted, without giving me any option, that I

cross into Azerbaijan. I did not want that. Then they handed me

over to a local guide who was to take me across the fields into

Azerbaijan by a roundabout route. There he was to put me in a taxi.

But I managed to convince the guide that I must go to Makhachkala.

That was how I found myself in Makhachkala. You know, I had my

fears that these people, on learning that I had not gone to

Makhachkala and changed my route, would try to find me. I did not

go to the law enforcement bodies because I had the feeling that the

people I mentioned had rather good contacts with the law

enforcement bodies. In any case, I was driven in the trunk of a car

from Chechnya through all the checkpoints without any hitches. The

car was never inspected.

That was why I decided to resort to the services of my

colleagues first of all. On reaching Makhachkala I telephoned my

correspondent in the Caucasus Oleg Kusov, asked him to leave for

Makhachkala immediately and it was my intent, already with Kusov,

to approach our friend in the press center of the Dagestan's

Interior Ministry.

After making the call from a pay phone in the morning I

registered in a hotel and during the day, when I went to a cafe, I

was identified by a local militia officer. I was detained, a day

later I was charged, I was arrested. It is very strange that I was

put in a preliminary detention center and it is very strange that

already last night people from Moscow, those whom I had asked to

guarantee the security of my family in connection with certain

events in Chechnya, told me that they were taking me to Moscow on

my request.

True, I had a slightly different request. There are many

circumstances that I simply cannot describe briefly.

Q: Do you link these developments with the remarks made by

Putin yesterday? He said that it was not expedient to keep you

behind bars.

A: You know, let this be the last question. I link everything

that is happening with some horrendous, terrible story that I

cannot unravel. I can only make conjectures. And I am deeply

convinced that the authorities, including the Interior Ministry

that is supposedly trying to help me now, are very, very seriously

involved in this confusing situation, in this nightmare experienced

by my family, in my personal very serious troubles and problems,

those that I have experienced during the past two months.

Anchor: Many things are not clear. And, judging by everything,

Andrei does not want or cannot speak about many things. It is hard

to believe that an experienced journalist has no clear idea about

the reasons why events had developed precisely the way they did,

why all this had happened precisely with him.

I hope that we will have a possibility soon to hear from him

the things he is keeping silent about so far.

I thank you for your attention, goodbye.