NAZRAN, Ingushetia — When his Russian-speaking captors told him they intended to blow him up by fastening an explosive-laden belt around his waist, Magomed Aushev felt strangely relieved. At least the torture would stop, he thought.
He had spent the previous 24 hours blindfolded and locked in a basement cellar somewhere in Chechnya. Every hour or so, a jailer would enter the cell and punch him with his fists. He could hear the screams of his cousin in a distant room as interrogators delivered electric shocks with a prod until he fainted.
Now the pair was being driven along a bumpy country road. His captors told him to prepare to die. Mr. Aushev, 23, a student and father of two, was at peace. "You are so tired of being tortured that you think this might be a good way to end it."
But fate was on Mr. Aushev's side: His powerful Ingush family got wind of his arrest and prepared protests in the Ingush capital of Nazran. His grandfather, also named Magomed Aushev, the uncle of Ingushetia's former president, started dialling his government contacts after the pair failed to return home.
Magomed Mutsolgov gave up his business has founded the human rights organization MASHR (Peace) in Ingushetia after his brother Bashir (4th from the left in the upper row) went missing. (Olga Kravets/The Globe and Mail)
The prominence of Mr. Aushev's name eventually spared him. The captors dumped the prisoners outside a Chechen police station.
Hundreds of other Ingush men have not been so lucky.
A narrow sliver of a republic with just 300,000 people, Ingushetia, situated on Chechnya's western border, has been plagued by a rising tide of violence in the past year. Nearly every week, there are reports of unlawful detentions, kidnappings, torture and shootouts between federal security forces and local militants.
Once a loyal republic whose citizens wanted nothing to do with the separatist Chechen rebels who waged two bloody wars with Russia, Ingushetia is now on the verge of its own insurgency.
Its proximity to Chechnya may be to blame.
The violence began in earnest four years ago when the late Chechen warlord, Shamil Basayev, staged a deadly raid on Nazran, killing more than 80 members of the Russian security forces.
Since then, it's believed that rebels driven from Chechnya have simply moved next door to continue their anti-Russian cause. Indeed, after Mr. Basayev was killed in 2006, the rebel leadership torch was handed to Amir Magas, now thought to be operating out of Ingushetia.
Russia responded by sending troops, police and security agents to patrol the region, especially refugee camps, where Chechen rebels were thought to be re-grouping.
But the influx of Russian security forces has fanned rather than quelled tensions.
Ingush activists say security forces went overboard with counterterrorism efforts in the small republic. The activists accused security forces of unlawful detentions, kidnappings and assassinations.
Observers say the Ingush insurgency, once tiny and ragtag, has grown in response to the arrival of Russian troops. Their ranks now include criminals and newly politicized radicals bent on avenging the deaths and disappearances of loved ones.
In the past two years, ethnic Russians and security forces have come under fire from these militant groups. Last summer, a Russian schoolteacher and her two children were shot in their beds. Also last year, assassins shot a Russian doctor on a public street, and two weeks ago, in the town of Karabulak, a senior Ingush judge was shot.
Moscow-based Oleg Orlov, of the human-rights group Memorial, said many Ingush believe Russia has overreacted to the militant threat and police are wrongly targeting activists.
"Russian law enforcers will tell you: 'We ousted militants in Chechnya and now they have gone to Ingushetia.' That is wrong," said Mr. Orlov, who was kidnapped by four masked men from his Nazran hotel in November during a trip to investigate human-rights abuses.
"Who is being arrested and killed? It's young locals. They are young, many of them students. They aren't united or organized."
Mr. Orlov said he and three Russian TV reporters were dragged from their rooms, beaten and dumped on a country road.
Later, he interviewed the hotel staff who told them swarms of men, providing no identification, stormed the hotel prior to the kidnapping, saying they were conducting a counterterrorist operation.
The North Caucasus in southwestern Russia is one of the poorest regions in the country. Its traditions and mainly Muslim religion set it apart from Russia's dominant Slavic culture.
Many social and criminal disputes are settled by clans and village elders, not state authorities, and blood feuds and vigilante justice are not uncommon.
Unlike Chechnya, Ingushetia has no secessionist agenda and has wanted to be part of the Russian Federation. Now, nearly everyone has a relative, friend or acquaintance who has disappeared. Local police and prosecutors who attempt to investigate allegations of police brutality have also vanished, as have citizens who speak out.
Many complain that the Kremlin-backed Ingush president, Murat Zyazikov, a former KGB officer and ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has done nothing to halt the violence.
The Aushev family has been among the most prominent critics of the Russian troop presence.
The detention of the two young Aushev men, the family claims, was likely intended to send a message to the vocal family.
In Nazran, the human-rights group Nashr, which means "peace" in Ingush, has compiled a data bank of the missing. Both Nashr and Memorial claim more than 200 people have disappeared since 2002.
Magomed Mutsolgov helped set up Nashr after his younger brother, Bashir, a schoolteacher and father of a six-month-old girl, was kidnapped by masked men while talking to a student near his parents' house in December of 2003.
Local traffic police who later stopped the speeding kidnappers' vehicle, said the driver produced Russian regional law enforcement identification. Bashir Mutsolgov was driven to a detention centre in the city of Magas, but there the trail runs cold.
His family hasn't heard from him since and federal authorities have stonewalled the family's search for answers.
Magomed Mutsolgov is convinced his brother was taken by federal security officers.
Meanwhile, Mr. Aushev's 43-year-old son, Maksharip, was arrested last February after helping to organize a protest rally in Nazran.
Maksharip Aushev is still in custody in the nearby republic of Kabardino-Balkaria. He's facing a charge of organizing a riot, his father said.
Ingush authorities say the security presence is necessary and that security forces have targeted Muslim radicals, not innocents.
"Why don't you ask Mutsolgov what his brother's business was?" said Isa Kostev, an Ingush representative in Russia's upper house of government. Ms. Kostev suggested the young schoolteacher likely had militant links.
As for the young Aushev men who were tortured, the pair say they have no idea why they were detained.
The two were returning to Ingushetia, via Chechnya, from the Russian city of Astrakhan, where they were looking at schools for a relative.
As they prepared to enter Ingushetia, their taxi was surrounded by four cars. Masked men pulled the cousins from the taxi, drew their T-shirts over their heads like hoods and bound them with tape.
They drove 20 minutes to a remote building, where they were tortured all night and the next day.
"I was 100 per cent sure we would be killed," Mr. Aushev recalled in a recent interview at his uncle's sprawling family compound in Nazran. "They said: 'We're bringing the Snickers belt [slang for a belt laced with explosives] to blow you up. No one will find your remains.' "
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