Health state of Ingush activist Zarifa Sautieva deteriorates, her defender reports

The long-term arrest affected the health and psychological state of Ingush activist Zarifa Sautieva, and she began to get sick often, advocate Bilan Dzugaev reports. Public defenders of the Ingush activists say their main goal is reporting the maximum information about the progress of the trial.

The “Caucasian Knot” has reported that since January 13, in the Stavropol Territory, the court is considering complaints against the verdicts against seven protest leaders in Magas. On May 12, advocates stated that the investigators and the court did not prove that there were signs of extremist activity in the actions of the convicts. The defenders called for an acquittal for the Ingush activists.

Zarifa Sautieva’s health state has recently caused concern, her defender notes. “To spend four years in a closed room is hard for a man, and even more so for a woman,” the advocate said.

According to Ruslan Ozdoev, Barakh Chemurziev tried to point out inconsistencies in the evidence to the court. In particular, according to the investigators’ version, the Ingush activists organized an extremist community in May 2018, but the case file contains the details of the conversations starting from February 2019 only.

Human rights defender Valery Khatazhukov notes that, in order to provide more coverage of the Ingush case, in addition to participating in the trial, the Human Rights Centre of the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic (KBR) posts on its YouTube channel the videos with the advocates participating in the case.

Oleg Orlov, a public defender of Zarifa Sautieva, the co-chair of the Human Rights Protection Centre “Memorial”, has emphasized that his goal is to draw the attention of the court to the public significance of the trial in the Ingush activists’ case.