A still from documentary ’Aldy: No statute of limitations’ showing Russian journalist Natalya Estemirova before her murder in 2009. Source: YouTube.This Sunday marked the seventeenth anniversary of the Aldy Massacre. This is what locals call the zachistka (cleansing operation) by Russian military units in the small village on the outskirts of Grozny. About 100 civilians were killed in the operation, mostly elderly people and women, with a one-year-old boy and his young mother also among the dead. According to eyewitnesses, the security forces who conducted the "cleansing operation" in Aldy acted with deliberate intention, because virtually none of those killed had done anything at all to provoke them to such cruelty.
Malika Ganayeva’s husband and two sons were killed on that day. She found their bodies, executed, on a street neighboring their own.
"They were lying side by side. Apparently they killed my youngest son first. The older boy hugged his father; he covered him as they fired. Our neighbour, Khakimov, was also killed with them. I screamed with some voice other than my own. Later on, the women from the next village over told me that even they had heard my cry," she recalls.
