22.04.2009 00:14 | Tragedy of South Ossetia. Gatikoev Tolik Yakovlevich

Gatikoev Tolik Yakovlevich, born in 1956, resident of village Hundisuban, Znaursky area of RSO, On August, 8 he was captured by Georgian soldiers

On August, 7, I grazed the cattle. In the evening I was going home, but it was already impossible. They were shooting, the war was already in full swing. We spend the night somehow. In the morning I went to search for my son, he wasn’t at home for nine days. I was going to the district center - settlement Znaur. On my way there I met my acquaintance, who said that Georgians were already running riot in the settlement: they beat the natives up unmercifully and killed one person – Ioseb Odikadze. My acquaintance suggested me to try to bury him in order that his body was not eaten by dogs. We went together to a place where Ioseb was killed. We reached Znaur but didn’t find the body.

There, in Znaur, I was captured by Georgians. They tied my arms to the right knee with a wire. Then they brought one more person. When the darkness fell, they took us somewhere. I did not know where we were going, but they wanted to kill us. “Well, with whose head shall we play football” - They were saying to each other.  I have already said goodbye to my life. One of them wanted to slaughter us. But the other man answered that it would be too easy. He wanted to bury us alive. They tortured us so that I can not even tell about it. They didn’tgiveuswateroranythingelse.

Then they threw us into the car body as if we were the trees and took us to a building. There were iron cages and they threw us there. We spent the night there. They beat us up.

In the morning we got in the bus. They took us to the prison. On the second day they interrogated us. They tried to make us tell them what technics Ossetians have and everything I knew about it… I said that I was a civilian. Where could we get the weapon from? Then they asked where the airport was. They affirmed there was an airport in Dzhava. But what’s an airport doing in narrow canyon? And they beat me, they said I was a liar and forced me to tell that there was an airport in Dzhava. I spent fifteen days in the prison. Then they took me and another guy somewhere. We were even afraid to ask where. But they exchanged us and five more persons for Georgians. I don’t know where these five men came from. I spent one night in the hospital of Tskhinval. Then I came home though they did not let me go. I was so bashed that could not sit and lay.

They beat us so that we could not move all day long. My body has a feature – no matter how strong they beat me, the bruises remain seldom. And so they used to come back and beat me. They wanted to check which blows would leave the bruises on my body. They beat me just because I was Ossetian. They spat at me. And I wasbadly mauled and could not resist.

When I returned home I looked terribly ill. I could not walk. And even now I feel a pain in my internals. The liver and kidneys hurt me. I can not work at all.

Translated by Tatiana Inozemtseva