As the trial opened, reports of other alleged abuses by the Russian military continued to surface from Chechnya. The Council of Europe commissioner for human rights, Alvaro Gil-Robles, who arrived in Chechnya yesterday, said he would try to investigate the claim by the journalist Anna Politkovskaya that Chechen villagers were being persecuted by Russian forces. The bodies of 20 more Chechens were found in a mass grave yesterday in the deserted and ruined holiday village near the main Russian garrison at Khankala, outside the capital, Grozny. Thirty-six corpses have been unearthed since the weekend. In a rare interview published yesterday, the Chechen independence leader Aslan Maskhadov called on the Russians to begin talks.
Russian officials refuse to talk to the rebel leaders.