January (Web-only) 2000

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A 13-year-old girl kidnapped from the Grozny Baptist Church by Islamist Chechen fighters more than three months ago was brought out of Chechnya's war zone last week. Young Anja Hrykin arrived on the doorstep of a Christian family in the neighboring North Ossetian capital of Vladikavkaz a few days after Christmas, escorted by Russian soldiers who had found her in an abandoned Chechen village.The frail teenager, described as so underfed and ill that "she looks like a nine-year-old," had managed to give the soldiers the name and address of Christians from Vladikavkaz who had visited her church regularly in the past."She was in very bad shape," a source who had talked with the Christians in Vladikavkaz told Compass yesterday. "She had been raped many, many times, beaten, and almost starved to death."The child told the Christian family who took her in that she had been forced by her captors to recite the Muslim creed and convert to Islam.After young Anja was taken to the hospital for examination and treatment, medical tests confirmed that she is pregnant."She doesn't want the child, understandably," the source said. "She has no idea who the father is, among all those who misused her. It's a very terrible, traumatic situation."The whereabouts and fate of Anja's mother, who stayed in the confiscated church building in Chechnya's capital of Grozny when Islamist militants took over the premises October 2, remain unknown. The mother, who had become mentally unstable, had been subjected to physical and drug abuse before church members took her and her daughter into their care, housing them in the church.Located in Grozny's Oktyabrsky suburb, the Baptist church was at last report being used by Chechen fighters as a military facility, ...