About 3,500 people have disappeared in Chechnya since beginning of the second Chechen war

Such data were published yesterday by Kheda Saratova, director of the independent press center in Grozny, and journalist Aleksandr Mnatsakanian.

The organizers of the press conference distributed among journalists forms with names of abducted people whose destiny remains unknown so far. These forms were brought from Chechnya. They contain the appeal of Malik Saidulayev, whose brother and sister were also abducted, to join efforts to search for the people. Kheda Saratova said she herself was amazed by the huge number of the abducted. She thinks this problem must be taken up.

Independent experts hold the figures are apparently incomplete. The federal forces and pro-Kremlin authorities do everything they can to suppress as many cases of such a kind as possible.