In April 2003 22-year-old Artur Akhmatkhanov was grabbed by masked soldiers and bundled into an armoured personnel carrier. He has not been seen since. According to eyewitnesses, it was members of the Russian federal forces (FSB) who detained the Grozny student and human rights volunteer. Artur Akhmatkhanov’s enforced disappearance is part of a deeply worrying pattern of ongoing human rights abuses in Chechnya and neighbouring republics in the North Caucasus. Amnesty International knows of only one conviction related to an enforced disappearance.
