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Forty-Eight Bodies Found In Mass Chechen Grave
MOSCOW, March 2 (News Agencies) - The number of bodies found in a mass grave unearthed near the Chechen capital of Grozny rose to 48 on Friday, with Chechnya's top pro-Moscow prosecutor claiming it might be a separatist cemetery.
The previous official total of bodies in the grave found Sunday in wasteland, one kilometer (mile) from the Russian base at Khankala, on the outskirts of the capital Grozny, had been 28.
Eyewitnesses quoted by the human rights group Memorial this week suggested that the bodies in the mass grave were those of Chechen civilians killed by Russian troops, but prosecutor Vsevolod Chernov dismissed the charge.
"The majority of the dead were probably rebels," he was quoted as saying by Interfax, pointing to the type of clothes found on the corpses, and adding: "Many of them are in internationally-made camouflage and Turkish underwear."
The Russian authorities have long accused the Chechen separatists of obtaining supplies and recruits from Islamic organizations in countries such as Turkey.
Chernov, a pro-Moscow official, added that, "practically all of the dead were men of fighting age" and "most of them had gunshot wounds and bandages."
He said the examination of the site had now been completed, and did not rule out the possibility that the Chechens had used the grave as a cemetery for foreign mercenaries.
Chernov said one of the hypotheses being looked at by investigators was that the separatists buried foreigners at the site while taking their own people home to be buried.
Human rights organizations have repeatedly accused the Russian military of rights abuses in Chechnya since the launch of Moscow's 17-month intervention in the separatist republic on October 1, 1999.
Earlier Friday, Chernov flatly denied media reports that Russian troops were keeping civilians as prisoners in earth pits in the south of the breakaway republic.
Last week, Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya said she was detained and threatened by Russian soldiers while she was covering the story of inhumane civilian earth pits in Chechnya.
However, Russian President Vladimir Putin's human rights envoy Vladimir Kalamanov told reporters late Friday after touring the region that it was "difficult" to believe the pits in question had been used to keep prisoners.
Kalamanov said he was convinced by the account given to him by a Russian officer, who said the pits were merely used for storing rubbish.
The Council of Europe's commissioner for human rights, Alvaro Gil-Robles, called for "a full inquiry" into the mass grave, one that "should be without impunity," after meeting Russian officials in Moscow this week.
After returning from a fact-finding visit to Chechnya, Gil-Robles told a senior Russian lawmaker Friday that human rights violations were abundant in Chechnya.
Ending the impunity enjoyed by Russian troops who mistreat civilians in Chechnya must be one of the top priorities for the Chechen authorities, Gil-Robles told journalists after meeting Dmitry Rogozin, chairman of the State Duma (lower house) foreign affairs committee.
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