MOSCOW (AP) - Illegal actions by federal troops in Chechnya hurt the Russian military's morale and its image among civilians, President Vladimir Putin's chief spokesman on the war-torn region said Tuesday.
"When servicemen, from a professional soldier to a high-ranking officer, breach the law, they undermine the already weak respect for the army and trigger its deterioration," Interfax news agency quoted Putin aide Sergei Yastrzhembsky as saying.
Yastrzhembsky called for the prosecution of soldiers and officers suspected of breaking the law in Chechnya, where human rights groups have accused the military of torture, killings and other alleged abuses of civilians during the conflict that began in 1999.
Despite Kremlin pledges to crackdown on abuses, such prosecutions are rare. Two weeks ago, the judge presiding over the first public trial of a Russian military officer charged with crimes against a Chechen civilian postponed the verdict, saying that the court had to consider the case further and that the suspect had to undergo a third psychiatric evaluation.
The defendant in the case is Col. Yuri Budanov, who has admitted strangling an 18-year-old Chechen woman two years ago but says he killed her in a rage while interrogating her because he thought she was a rebel sniper. The victim's family denies she was a sniper and says she was dragged from her home at night, raped and murdered during a drunken rampage by soldiers.
Human rights groups and Chechen civilians say abuses are common during operations in which Russian troops seal off villages in Chechnya and round up suspected rebels and sympathizers.
At least 140 people were detained in such operations in three towns and on the outskirts of the capital Grozny over the previous 24 hours, an official in the Russian-backed administration of Chechnya said Tuesday. Interfax reported that several dozen women blocked traffic on a main road in Chechnya to demand the release of six suspects who were detained Monday.
The administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said rebels attacked Russian outposts 18 times over the same period, killing four servicemen and wounding 11.
Two servicemen were killed in an attack on a column of military trucks in the town of Argun and three Chechen police from the Russian-backed administration were killed in three separate clashes, the official said. He said four rebels were killed fighting police and federal forces.
Citing military officials in Chechnya, Interfax reported that two teen-agers were killed when a radio-controlled land mine exploded while they were trying to plant it on a road.
Russian troops withdrew from Chechnya in defeat after a 1994-96 war but entered the region again in 1999 after Chechnya-based rebels invaded a neighboring region and apartment-building bombings that the Kremlin blamed on the rebels killed 300 people in Moscow and other cities. The wars have killed tens of thousands of people.