In a BBC’s HARDtalk interview on 8 March Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili denied that Georgia has “secretly extradited to Russia two Chechens,” however labeled these two men as “armed combatants.”
Two Chechens – Bekkhan Mulkoev and Husein Alkhanov, disappeared in Georgia ten days after being acquitted by a Tbilisi district court on February 6 of having violated border regulations and entered Georgia illegally.
Later Russian security service detained both of them at the Russian-Georgian border. Chechen community in Georgia expressed fears that two men were abducted and secretly extradited to Russia by the Georgian authorities.
“These are just allegations. We don’t need secret extraditions,” Mikheil Saakashvili told BBC’s HARDtalk.
“I was worrying about the information [disappearance of Chechens]. Russians say that they [Chechens] were captured at the Russian border, which really seems to me realistic,” Saakashvili said.
Despite the Tbilisi court decision, which acquitted two Chechens, Georgian President said “they definitely are the combatants, according to my information.”
Two Chechens were among a group of 13 Chechens arrested by the Georgian border guards in the late summer of 2002, five of whom were forcibly extradited to Russia. However, Mulkoev and Alkhanov survived extradition due to the successful court procedures in Georgia.
Following 7 months of the court procedures, the Supreme Court of Georgia ruled to decline extradition of Bekkhan Mulkoev and Husein Alkhanov to the Russian Federation last May.
Nevertheless, they were not released as the Georgian law enforcers were accusing them of illegal crossing of the border and carrying firearms. However, the court acquitted them on February 6 2004 and were released after year and a half of detention in Georgia.
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