ALLEROI, Russia (Islamweb & Agencies) - As villagers cried more abuses at the hands of Russian invasion authorities, a top Russian minister pledged Sunday that his invadingl troops would be held responsible if they commit crimes in the Chechnya war.
Alexander Blokhin, minister for nationalities and migration policy, was addressing an assembly of Russian minority groups.
He claimed several criminal probes had been launched against servicemen, without giving figures.
Human rights groups say abuses are widespread and accuse authorities of reluctance to prosecute servicemen. (Read photo caption below).
Only one has come to trial, that of a tank commander accused of raping and strangling an 18-year-old Chechen woman.
Two brothers from the town of Alleroi, 40 miles east of the capital Grozny, returned home Sunday after being detained by Russian troops, saying they had been badly beaten.
The men said they had been harvesting hay when they heard an explosion Thursday. As they headed home later, a group of Russian soldiers seized them.
``They demanded that we confess that we were responsible for the land mine,'' said 42-year-old Magomed Dzhamalkhadzhiyev. ``We have always been farmers, not fighters. We showed them the hay but they ignored it.''
He said he and his brother were detained but were released after relatives intervened. His face was covered in bruises he received from beatings by the soldiers, and he said his ribs were broken.
Zelimkhan Muskhanov, a 21-year-old villager from Voikovo, south of Grozny, said he was seized from his house Friday at dawn by Russian soldiers sweeping his town for Resistance fighters. He said he was repeatedly beaten during his detention at the Russian military headquarters in Khankala.
``If they use such methods they should not say that they are fighting the Resistance. In reality they are fighting the Chechen people,'' he said.
The sweeps and detentions are a response to the daily raids and mine blasts by small Resistance groups that continue to kill Russian soldiers around the republic daily, despite Moscow's claims to control most of Chechnya.
Russian troops are trying to restore Moscow's control over the breakaway region, which achieved de facto independence in a 1994-96 war. Federal forces went back into Chechnya in September 1999 after rebels based there attacked a neighboring region, and after apartment bombings blamed on Chechen terrorists killed some 300 people.
PHOTO CAPTION:
Twenty-one-year-old Chechen villager Zelimkhan Muskhanov, who said he was seized from his house Friday at dawn by soldiers and repeatedly beaten in detention, poses for a photographer in the Chechen village of Voikovo just south of Grozny, Sunday, July 8, 2001. Russia's nationalities minister pledged Sunday that federal troops would be held responsible if they commit crimes in the Chechnya war, while Chechen villagers claimed they were tortured in Russian detention. (AP Photo )