MOSCOW, Feb 2, 2022 (AFP) – Amnesty International on Wednesday called on Russia to investigate the rights situation in Chechnya and “immediately” release the mother of an anti-torture activist, arrested and forcibly brought back to the tightly-controlled republic.
Zarema Musayeva, the mother of three exiles critical of strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, was detained by Chechen forces in mid-January in Nizhny Novgorod — a city 1,800 kilometres (1,120 miles) north of Chechnya.
Her family say she was kidnapped in revenge, with the case spreading fears in Russia that strongman Ramzan Kadyrov’s notorious security services can operate far beyond Chechnya’s borders.
Police said Musayeva was detained in connection to an old fraud case. After Kadyrov said the 59-year-old diabetic attacked a police officer and “almost rid him of an eye”, a Chechen court on Wednesday ruled she would be behind bars for two months.
“Bandits in masks dragged my wife away,” her husband, Saidi Yangulbayev, who is a former Chechen federal judge who has since fallen afoul of the regime, told the Znak.com media.
The couple’s son, Abubakar Yangulbayev, worked as a lawyer for the Committee Against Torture and left Russia after an interrogation in December.
Chechen authorities accuse another one of their sons of leading an anti-Kadyrov social media account from abroad.
The Committee Against Torture sent AFP a CCTV video of unknown men dragging a visibly distressed Musayeva from a lift.
It said it had sent the case to the European Court of Human Rights.
The case further shocked Russia on Wednesday, when a Chechen lawmaker in Russia’s lower house of parliament State Duma — Adam Delimkhanov — vowed on social media to “cut the heads off” the entire family.
The Kremlin said this week that Vladimir Putin had “no plans” on getting involved in the case, but said Wednesday that a letter from Russian media chiefs for the Russian president to look into Kadyrov’s threats against journalists will be considered.
Moscow has often turned a blind eye to Kadyrov, a former warlord turned Putin ally who heads Chechnya on his own rule, with widespread evidence of the torture of his critics.
Following the arrest, Kadyrov vowed to go after the entire Yangulbayev family.
“This little family has a place waiting for them either in prison or underground,” he wrote on Telegram the day after the arrest.
He also called on the unnamed countries who had given refuge to the Yangulbayev’s sons — whom he called “these scumbags” — to return them to Russia.
Kadyrov’s security services have targeted exiles in the past, with Germany last year expelling two Russian diplomats over the 2019 murder of a Chechen in Berlin.
Yangulbayev said in his Znak.com interview that in 2015 he was brought to Kadyrov’s residence with his sons, where they were beaten.
He said one of his sons was tortured and beaten by Kadyrov himself, and said he came home “almost not alive.”
[embedpost slug=”palestinian-pm-calls-on-un-to-protect-palestinians/”]
