CAIRO (AFP) — Egypt on Thursday forcibly deported four Chechen students to Russia, where Amnesty International says they risk being tortured, but a traffic jam prevented police from getting a key warlord's son to the airport in time to join them.
Four students among dozens rounded up by security services on May 27 were put on a flight to Moscow.
But police transporting Maskhud Abdullaev, whose father Supyan is fighting Russian rule in Chechnya, were caught up in a traffic jam and the youth did not reach the the airport, a friend told AFP.
"A police officer took him to the airport but they were delayed on the way by a traffic jam and the plane had already taken off," said Ruslan Mussayev.
"He doesn't want to go to Russia; there's a problem for him there," Mussayev said of Abdullaev, who he said is now due to fly on Friday.
The students had been rounded up for suspected links to an alleged Al-Qaeda cell responsible for a February 22 bombing in Cairo's tourist district which killed a French teenager.
Abdullaev, who had been studying at Cairo's renowned Al-Azhar Islamic University since 2006, was initially held incommunicado at Egypt's notorious Tora prison, London-based Amnesty said.
The students all claim to have refugee status in Azerbaijan but the Egyptian authorities insisted they return instead to Russia where they face torture or other ill-treatment, Amnesty said.
It added that four other students arrested at the same time were deported to Russia on June 9, where Russian and Chechen security forces handcuffed them and took them away on arrival.
One of the four has since disappeared and is believed to have been moved to Chechnya.
Amnesty says it regularly receives reports of detainees being tortured in Russia, while in Chechnya detainees are at risk of torture, extrajudicial execution and enforced disappearance.
The predominantly Muslim region fought two wars with Moscow after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, but it has achieved a measure of stability in recent years under the rule of strongman Ramzan Kadyrov.
North Caucsus security analyst Andrei Soldatov told AFP that Supyan Abdullaev is "pretty active" and believed to be part of the "inner circle" of Doku Umarov, the leader of Chechnya's remaining separatist rebels.
Umarov's fate is currently unknown, with the Russian authorities refusing to confirm a report on Monday that he had been killed in a special operation by Russian security forces.
"This is a very important character," Soldatov said of Supyan, adding that he is currently believed to be in charge of Chechen rebel finances.
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