RUSSIA: President Vladimir Putin of Russia sacked his special rights envoy for Chechnya yesterday, and handed responsibility for investigating the region's litany of murder, torture and kidnap cases to its ex-warlord president and his infamous personal army.
Human rights groups deplored the decision, saying Chechen leader Mr Akhmad Kadyrov had even less credibility for defending basic liberties than Mr Abdul-Khakim Sultygov, the Kremlin envoy whom Mr Putin dismissed after 18 months of ineffectuality.
"Since the presidential elections, the full responsibility for guaranteeing rights and freedoms for people in Chechnya lies with Akhmad Kadyrov," said Mr Alexei Gromov, the Kremlin press secretary.
Mr Kadyrov won a landslide victory last October in elections that observers, international watchdogs and Chechnya's separatist rebels called a farce. As Moscow's chosen candidate, the former rebel commander watched all his main opponents either withdraw from the vote or be excluded on campaign technicalities.
Mr Putin called the election a key stage in bringing peace to Chechnya, where Russia is fighting its second war in a decade with guerrillas. They continue to kill federal troops daily, and radical elements have pledged more bomb attacks on civilian targets.
"It's laughable to suggest that Kadyrov can become a guarantor of human rights, and useless to think he doesn't need to be controlled," said Ms Lyudmilla Alekseyeva, chairwoman of the Moscow Helsinki Group rights organisation.
Mr Kadyrov's personal security force, led by his son Ramzan, is regarded by many Chechens as little more than a brutal criminal band, whose members regularly clash with federal forces and Chechen police units.
"Sultygov won't be a great loss to the Chechen people because his work was negligible," said Ms Anna Neistadt, chief Moscow representative for US-based Human Rights Watch. "But I have serious doubts that Kadyrov could look after human rights. He's been there a few years now, and essentially nothing has improved."
The Council of Europe said this week that the office of the Kremlin's special envoy in Chechnya had received of 9,952 allegations of rights abuses between 2000 and April 2003.