03 September 2018, 22:28
Sources report over 40 residents of Argun being tortured
In the city of Argun, law enforcers have tortured 40 detainees trying to knock confessions out of them, sources assert. The Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) of Chechnya calls this information a lie.
According to the sources, in August, about 40 men were detained in Argun; they were tortured and forced to confess to the involvement in the armed underground. Dozens of people were kept in one cell sized five to eight meters; on August 23, they were released, the "Kavkaz.Realii" has reported.
The Chechen police noted the non-involvement of Ayub Kataev, the former head of the Argun police, whom the sources mentioned, in these detentions.
The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that Kataev appeared in investigations of the "Novaya Gazeta" into the persecution of gays in Chechnya; he was put on the sanction "Magnitsky list" after US Senators demanded to punish those guilty of arrests and torture of gays.
The mass arrests and murders in Chechnya of men suspected of unconventional sexual orientation, as well as about the "secret prison" for gays in Argun, were reported by the "Novaya Gazeta" in April 2017. According to the "Russian LGBT Network", from the start of 2017, 125 men left Chechnya for fear to become victims of persecution.
This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on September 3, 2018 at 07:38 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.
