The Australian: A life of fear, after the war [November 28, 2005]: "AFTER surviving two ferocious wars that claimed the lives of 18 relatives, Dzhambulat Dushayev hoped that yesterday's parliamentary election in Chechnya, the first in eight years, would herald peace.

The 35-year-old builder from the village of Staraya Sunzha believed the Kremlin's claim that the election signified a return to democracy, stability and security and even served on the electoral commission supervising the polling. But his faith proved to be tragically misplaced.

Ten days ago, he went to get his car washed at a garage on the outskirts of Grozny, the capital, and invited his cousin Ruslan to come along for the ride. Darkness was falling as he left his bungalow. He called out to his wife Raziat, 30, who is eight months pregnant, to lay the table for dinner. His children Deni, 3, and Amina, 14 months, waved as he left.

On the journey home, Dushayev and his cousin came across 10 heavily armed Russian soldiers who had spent most of the day drinking vodka in a wood, apparently to celebrate the end of their tour of duty in Chechnya.

The soldiers had just flagged down three scrap-metal dealers in a small truck. They had dragged two of them from the vehicle and ordered them to lie on the ground.

As Dushayev drove up, they were beating the men with their rifle butts. Some of the soldiers ran towards his car, brandishing Kalashnikov AK-47 rifles.

'They were shooting in the air,' Ruslan Dushayev said. 'They dragged us out of the car, threatened us and shouted abuse. They were very aggressive. Dzhambulat was calm. He thought it was an ID check.'

Sure enough, one of the soldiers demanded Ruslan's papers. He checked them, then ordered Ruslan to run away. As he fled, another soldier fired at him but missed.

Dzhambulat Dushayev was ordered to lie on the ground next to the two scrap-metal dealers who were being kicked and beaten.

What happened next was witnessed by the third scrap-metal dealer, Movsar Munayev, who had been held at gunpoint in the truck by a soldier so drunk that he could barely hold his weapon straight.

'He kept shouting that I had killed his brother and that now he would kill me,' Munayev, 23, said. 'He wanted money and I gave him all I had as well as my watch.'

The soldier shot out the lights of the truck and reached for a large hunting knife strapped to his chest, shouting that he was going to cut off Munayev's head. His commander intervened but the soldier shot Munayev in the leg and he fell out of the truck screaming.

'I turned my head to the side and saw the other three men on the ground,' Munayev said. 'They were beating them severely and one soldier kept yelling that they had killed his brother.

'One of the men on the ground was pleading for his life. 'Don't kill me', he kept saying. Then the Russians executed them.'

Dushayev, whose young family was waiting for him to join them for their evening meal, died first, shot in the forehead at point-blank range with a heavy machinegun. The bullets blew a gaping hole between his eyes and obliterated the back of his head. The other two men, Yusup Usmanov and Husain Ahmadov, both also married with children, were shot several times.

The Russians then repeatedly stabbed the bodies with a large hunting knife that was found later at the scene. Dushayev's family said he had nine stab wounds. His cousin Ruslan escaped by crawling into a roadside ditch."