Putin claims Chechnya's 'disappeared' are all magicians

Russian Tsar Vladimir Putin has refuted claims by Human Rights Watch that two people 'disappear' in Chechnya each week when security forces take them away by claiming that all the alleged victims are either terrorists, magicians or closely-related to magicians. He claimed that it was obvious to all sensible observers of the war in Chechnya that the 'disappeared' who ended up in mass graves were terrorists (3000 bodies have been recovered so far) and the remainder were simply amateur sorcerers whose vanishing acts had gone wrong.

At a quickly convened press conference in Moscow today, Tsar Putin said: 'Everyone knows Chechnya has more magicians per capita than any other country and that the black arts are especially popular with young men of military age. Only the truly ignorant don't know that. Every visitor who goes there comments on the weird vibes in the war-zone.'

He assured reporters that many of the 'so-called disappeared' would be re-appearing sometime soon when they figured out how to reverse the spell and return from 'the other side'. He claimed that many magicians had also made their assistants - usually close relatives - disappear as part of their acts, but they too would turn up somewhere soon - maybe not in Chechnya itself, but somewhere.