Dusk was falling over the Chechen village of Kirov-Yurt when the Russian troops approached Uvais Nagayev, 32, at the gate of his family house. They asked him and his friend Zaur Dagayev, 29, for their passports, beat them to the ground, and dragged them to a nearby cemetery. They made the men lie down on gravestones and shot them. Mr Dagayev was killed outright. Mr Nagayev, wounded, managed to crawl home under cover of darkness. Six days later, on May 3 2001, he was taken from his home again by Russian troops. This time he did not return. His family heard nothing more of him until a Russian security officer told them he had been tortured, forced to confess some unspecified crimes, and killed. His body was blown up with explosive, a common tactic to hide the identity of victims.
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