Boston Globe
By David Filipov, Globe Staff

NAZRAN, Russia - If Khasman Okhayeva wants to see her nephew Ruslan again, she will have to pay up. The Russian officer who is holding Ruslan's body at a federal military base outside Chechnya's capital, Grozny, has set a price for the remains: $1,000, plus a $200 gold necklace.

That is the going rate for corpses in Chechnya these days. But the price is prohibitive for Okhayeva, a Chechen refugee who supports five children by working at a street market.

Ruslan was killed in an ambush by Russian troops. Okhayeva has photographs of the boy's body that a Russian officer brought her. But if she wants to bury his body according to Chechen custom, in the boy's home village, she will have to pay.

The practice of demanding ransom for bodies is a gruesome recent twist in what Chechen civilians, politicians, and human rights advocates say has become a money-making free-for-all by Russian troops occupying most of the separatist republic.

Few express surprise that the dead have become a valuable commodity. Twenty months after the Kremlin sent troops into Chechnya to retake control of the war-torn region from Islamic separatists whom Moscow accused of sowing terror with kidnappings, bombings, and raids on neighboring regions, Chechens have come to expect the worst.

''For the troops, this is a gold rush,'' said Aslanbek Aslankhanov, Chechnya's representative to the Russian Parliament. ''They have robbed the people into poverty.''

Everyone in Chechnya must pay bribes to pass military checkpoints, some of which have ''cash register'' signs pointing out where to pay. Nearly everyone has had property or valuables confiscated during document checks. And Aslankhanov and others say Russian officers have schemed to export oil from Chechnya's ruined wells and refineries.

Every day, people go missing in security sweeps intended to catch suspected rebel fighters. On Sunday, Russian news agencies said troops conducting a sweep had killed a leading rebel commander, Arbi Barayev, who was wanted for masterminding a number of kidnappings during Chechnya's period of de facto independence, from 1996 to 1999.

But many others get caught in the sweeps, and often the only ones who come home are those who can bribe their way out or whose loved ones can pay ransom.

''Every Chechen family has several people missing,'' said Khaipa Mezhiyeva at the office of the human rights group Memorial in Ingushetia, a Russian republic that borders Chechnya. ''If they don't find them right away, it usually means they are dead. If you don't have the ransom, then it's farewell.''

Mezhiyeva spends most of her time looking for the bodies of Chechens who have disappeared. She videotapes and photographs those she finds, then tries to put names to faces. It is grisly work. Many bodies are badly decomposed or badly maimed by the killers.

It is also dangerous: Many of the mass graves are mined. But there is no one else to do it.

Neither Moscow nor Chechnya's pro-Russian authorities have kept track of civilian deaths. Only in June did the Kremlin-appointed commissioner for human rights in the republic, Vladimir Kalamanov, acknowledge that 930 Chechen civilians had disappared. Of these, he said, 366 had been found in Russian detention centers, and 18 had been killed.

But Chechens and rights advocates say these figures are far too low. They say that nearly every Russian unit has its own ''detention center,'' which is typically an open pit in the ground where detainees are beaten and tortured until they are ransomed or killed.

But it is difficult to find evidence to back the reports of families and advocates. Memorial's offices are visited by about two dozen people a month who are searching for loved ones who have disappeared. Its activists say the number would be higher if Chechens, journalists, and rights advocates were able to travel freely.

Mezhiyeva said she finds 20 corpses a day. She showed photographs of men and women she said she had discovered the day before. ''If the troops ever saw these, they would shoot me,'' she said.

To get through checkpoints unscathed and unsearched, she regularly pays a slightly larger bribe than usual.

Moscow has been slow to acknowledge wrongdoing by its troops. To date, only one officer has been brought to trial - for killing a Chechen girl - although President Vladimir Putin may have signaled a tougher line when he told journalists last week that servicemen who broke laws would be ''brought to justice.''

Two days after Putin spoke, Russian security officers rounded up 19 soldiers to question them about the shooting of seven civilians in a village near Grozny.

Meanwhile, activists for Moscow-based Memorial said they have discovered a number of mass graves scattered across Chechnya. In March, they found at least 60 mutilated bodies of men and women near the Russian base at Khankala airfield, just outside Grozny.

The Kremlin said the bodies were those of victims of Chechen kidnappers or of Chechen rebels who died fighting Russian troops. But human rights activists said the bodies are those of Chechen civilians executed after they were detained by federal troops.

A Chechen named Ismail, who asked that his last name not be printed, said he witnessed the killing of one of the men found in the mass grave, human rights activist Salkhan Askhabov.

Ismail is one of the lucky ones. Last August, he said, he was detained by Russian soldiers and kept in a ditch near Khankala for two weeks. The soldiers demanded that he confess to being a rebel and provide information about the location of other fighters. When he was unable to give the Russians what they wanted, Ismail said he was beaten with sticks, given electric shocks, and attacked by dogs.

Then he was freed. His family paid a ransom of $500 by raising money from friends, a debt he has not been able to pay.

Ismail said he watched Askhabov being taken away. When his body was found, it was so badly disfigured and decomposed that family members could only recognize him by his teeth. Two other men detained at the same time have never been found.

In April, the troops took 11 more people from Ismail's village of Alkhan-Kala, just west of Grozny. Townspeople later found the body of one man, a local taxi driver named Adyani Larsanov, with a single bullet wound in the back of his head. The others have not turned up. ''I believe they are no longer alive,'' Ismail said.

He went to Nazran for treatment of an ulcer and back ailments he developed during his detention. Last month, while he was in Nazran, Russian troops came back to his village asking for him. ''If I give my name, I will disappear,'' he said.

Ismail said he expects the troops to keep coming back for him as long as they can get money. Moscow recently reduced the pay soldiers get for serving in a war zone, and people in Chechnya say this means troops will be looking for new ways to make money.

When Okhayeva found out last month what had become of her nephew Ruslan, she was told by a Russian officer that if she wanted to retrieve his body, she should bring $1,000, two machine guns, and a captured Russian officer. The price was later dropped to $1,000 and a $200 gold chain, which the officer said he wanted to give his wife as a gift.

Okhayeva is trying to raise the money and get some reassurance that the right body will be released if she pays.

''They demand ransom for everyone they can put their hands on,'' Okhayeva said. ''Dead or alive, it doesn't matter.''