Read this

If you can read Russian, that is.

This is the article that the recently assassinated Russian journalist (a re-hash from Radio Free Europe, who does great work on Russia and Post-Soviet states, of course) was working on when she was killed. It's suspected that it's part of the reason she was killed, but who knows?

The report(that's an English link) describes incidents of police torturing suspects in Chechnya, and the official hullabaloo that went on around it. It would remind me of something similar in America, but this is real torture, you can see the pictures for yourself.

The whole situation is like a movie. A prominent critic of a dictatorialesque president is murdered by contract killers on said president's birthday. Meanwhile, she is working on exposing yet another incidence of torture. And a few days later (three or four actually, maybe five), said president comes out and condemns her death in relatively strong language. Yet, no senior government officials attended her funeral.