Group claims Ingushetia rights abuses

MOSCOW, June 25 (UPI) -- Russian security forces are using torture and extrajudicial executions in the Caucasus republic of Ingushetia, a human rights group said Wednesday.

Human Rights Watch claims authorities are committing such abuses with impunity across the North Caucasus region, spreading behaviors first noted in Russia's struggle against Islamic separatists in nearby Chechnya. The group issued a 120-page report Wednesday entitled, "As If They Fell From the Sky! Counterinsurgency, Rights Violations and Rampant Impunity in Ingushetia."

"The crimes in Ingushetia, although on a far smaller scale, evoke the thousands of enforced disappearances, killings, and torture cases that plagued Chechnya for more than a decade," Tanya Lokshina, Russia researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in a release.

Russia is fighting militant groups in Ingushetia whose aim, as in Chechnya, is to unseat Russian-backed governments and promote Islamic rule in the North Caucasus. Last year, insurgent attacks rose sharply in Ingushetia and Human Rights Watch says security forces have responded by carrying out abduction-style detentions of suspected insurgents.

"Far from ending the insurgency, 'dirty war' tactics are likely to further destabilize the situation in Ingushetia and beyond in the North Caucasus," Human Rights Watch says.