Sweden’s national radio broadcaster Sveriges Radio has reported that a young man was killed and another one was abducted a few weeks ago in the Russian occupied Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.

According to the report, the over a decade long war in Chechnya ended but the disappearances of people, especially young men, without a trace still continues there. Rashid and Raisa had two sons a few weeks ago and now one of them has been killed and the other one was abducted.

Aslan was kidnapped when he was going to classes at his university. He was later seen dressed in military clothes while he was held by two [pro-Russian] police officers outside of a house in Grozny where [pro-Russian] forces broke in and shot his brother Apti. One day later, Aslan managed to call his parents: “I am a prisoner. They are keeping me in a [pro-Russian] police station in Grozny. Please help me and do anything you can” he said during the short conversation. Since then they have not heard anything about him.

“Since Aslan disappeared, I have been looking everywhere. I am never sitting at home but instead I am going from one police station to the other, asking for my son and crying, but they are indifferent,” said Raisa.

“They disappear and no one asks for money, so the parents are looking and looking. If they are not found immediately, then I believe that they have been killed,” said Oleg Khabibrakhmanov, a young Russian lawyer who works for the Joint Mobile Group which monitors kidnappings in Chechnya.

Rashid sits in a small house behind high gray-blue iron gates and hopes. “To get Aslan back, I would accept any terms, pay any amount of money, leave Chechnya forever, and even give my own life,” said Rashid.

According to the human rights organization, Memorial, around 5,000 people have disappeared in Chechnya in the past decade. In most of cases, the Russian state and its armed forces were involved.

*Text was translated by Waynakh Online and edited by Michael Capobianco