In the winter of 2001, the military part of the Second Chechen War was mostly over. Russian federal forces had established themselves across Chechnya. However, there was still considerable guerrilla activity, and Russian forces were conducting a savage campaign against the remaining separatists, that took a huge toll on the civilian population. Torture, extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances were daily occurrences.
On February 18, 2001, at about seven in the morning, Mayr-Ali (19) and Lema Shavanov (34) were detained on the Grozny-Shatoy highway. Driving with two cars, they were heading towards the neighbouring settlement to buy heating oil. The brothers lived in Starye Atagi, where gas supply disruptions were quite common. Empty fuel containers were loaded into their cars. Shamkhan Yunusov (a random passenger), also from Starye Atagi, was in one of the cars.
At the 10-kilometer mark of the highway, the cars were stopped by soldiers from a Russian airborne assault unit, who arrived there in three armored personnel carriers (their identification numbers are known). Without explaining the reasons, they ordered Mayr-Ali and Lema Shavanov to leave their cars and sit in their armored personnel carriers. Brothers’ explanations that they were going for fuel to heat the house were not taken into consideration. However, the brothers managed to convince the military not to detain Shamkhan Yunusov.
Shamkhan Yunusov immediately returned to Starye Atagi and informed about the incident. The father of the abducted men, together with another son, went immediately to the place of abduction. Not finding any traces of neither military nor armored personnel carriers there, he tried to go after them. But without success.
On the same day, he began to visit all detention centres known to him, where detained people were kept under various circumstances. But he could not find his sons in any of the centres. At least, that’s what he was told by the military and Russian policemen.
Via questioning people at checkpoints, he found out that a convoy of armored personnel carriers, similar to those he was looking for, was spotted driving towards Khankala, the main Russian military base in Chechnya. Two days later, the father of the kidnapped brothers went there.
In Khankala, however, there was no information about the brothers. Next day, the mother of Mayr-Ali and Lema Shavanov went to the base. The officers who spoke with her again denied knowledge of the brothers, however the fact that the convoy of armored personnel carriers had entered the base was secretly confirmed by an ordinary soldier on duty at the checkpoint.
The parents of the kidnapped brothers came back to Khankala on the third, fourth, and fifth day. They were sure that their sons were there. One day, “an intermediary” approached them and offered assistance in release of their sons for six thousand USD. The ransom, according to him, had to be paid within a week, since Mayr-Ali and Lema Shavanov were supposed to be taken somewhere by this time. But the mother said that she could not collect more than one thousand USD. The “intermediary” promised to give an answer to her the next day and disappeared. A few days later, the woman accidentally saw this man and approached him herself. But when she asked if he could help, he said that her sons were not at the base, and he did not know where they could be now.
A year later, the mother of the kidnapped men met a woman whose son, according to her, was kept in Khankala in the same detention cell as Mayr-Ali and Lema Shavanov. According to her, one day brothers were told that they were free and taken outside. After that, traces of the brothers were lost.
Parents and relatives of the kidnapped brothers repeatedly and for many years applied to local and regional law enforcement and civil authorities. They travelled and looked for them in prisons, and attended the uncovering of a number of graves. But all these efforts, as it turned out, were in vain. As of the beginning of 2022, nothing is known about the fate of the two bothers.
On April 1, 2001, the prosecutor’s office of the Grozny district opened a criminal case into the unlawful imprisonment of Mayr-Ali and Lema Shavanov. Two months later the investigation was suspended. The proceedings in the criminal case were stopped several times, and then, due to newly discovered circumstances or simply because of complaints from relatives, resumed again.
The disappeared brothers are registered in the list of the Committee of Mothers of the Chechen Republic “Dog Teshar” (“Hope of the Heart”). Trying to find out something about their fate, the relatives turned to Russian television, to the Office of the Ombudsman for Human Rights of the Russian Federation, to employees of non-governmental and human rights organizations.
Information about these brothers is taken from the database of the Natalia Estemirova Documentation Center (NEDC). In total, the Database contains information about approximately six thousand people who have disappeared during the second Russian-Chechen armed conflict and its aftermath. Some of them can be found on the NEDC’s website here.