Soldier who has disappeared in North Ossetia returns to Volgograd Region

Mikhail Tarantsov, Ombudsman for the Volgograd Region, told at the meeting with journalists that this May parents of a young man had addressed him asking to search their son. In May 2006, the guy was recruited from the Ilovlinskiy District of the Volgograd Region for his active military service. He was sent to the military unit deployed in the city of Mozdok (North Ossetia-Alania). Early this year the communication of the soldier with his parents suddenly stopped.

The command of the military unit, where the soldier should have passed his service, informed the relatives that the recruit had been recognized sick, decommissioned and left the unit back on March 27, 2007. "However, neither monetary settlement nor departure certificate were issued to the soldier," the Ombudsman has noted.

As a result of joint actions of the Commission for Human Rights of North Ossetia, heads of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Military Prosecutor's Office, this June the guy was found and returned home. The soldier himself told, according to Mr Tarantsov, that back last year, when the unit was at exercises in Chechnya, he was delivered, together with two more colleagues, by his squadron commander into labour slavery to private persons.

"I intend to force the Military Prosecutor's Office to make a detailed investigation into the circumstances of the incident, reveal particular guilty persons and punish them according to the current legislation," Mikhail Tarantsov has promised.