Lawyers criticize refusal to investigate Musaeva’s kidnapping

In Nizhny Novgorod, investigators forwarded to the Prosecutor’s Office of Chechnya a complaint about the kidnapping of Zarema Musaeva, so as not to take on the clarification of the involvement of Chechen law enforcers in the kidnapping, lawyer Nadezhda Yermolaeva suggests.

The “Caucasian Knot” has reported that on January 31, it became known about the criminal case against Zarema Musaeva, who, according to the law enforcement bodies’ version, scratched a policeman’s face when she was taken to a police station. Valery Fadeev, the head of the Presidential Council for Human Rights, called on Alexander Bastrykin, the chair of the Investigating Committee of the Russian Federation (ICRF), to take Zarema Musaeva’s case from Chechen investigators, as it is connected with the conflict between the Chechen authorities and the Yangulbaev family.

The “Committee Against Torture”* intend to appeal against the investigators’ decision to transfer from Nizhny Novgorod to Grozny the complaint about Zarema Musaeva’s kidnapping, says Natalia Kurekina, the press secretary of the “Committee Against Torture”*.

Advocate Nadezhda Yermolaeva described the justification for the investigators’ decision to redirect the complaint to Chechnya as a “formal reply.” The advocate suggests that the investigators do not want to identify who of the law enforcers was involved in the kidnapping of Zarema Musaeva.

* The “Committee Against Torture” (CaT) was included by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) of Russia in the register of NCOs-foreign agents in 2015. In this regard, leaders liquidated the organization and created a new legal entity: the “Committee for the Prevention of Torture”, which was also included in the list of foreign agents, and the organization was closed. At present, the “Committee Against Torture” operates as an unregistered public association.