"Vyorstka": four Akhmat fighters removed from terrorist list ahead of time

After taking part in the special military operation (SMO) in Ukraine as members of the "Akhmat" unit, four natives of Chechnya, Dagestan and the Bryansk Region have been prematurely excluded from the list of terrorists and extremists run by the "Rosfinmonitoring" (Russian Federal Financial Monitoring Service), the outlet named "Vyorstka" (Layout) has reported.

According to the laws, they should not have been in the SMO zone. "Some of them were under administrative supervision prohibiting them from leaving their residences; others were serving their conditional sentences. Besides, they could not take advantage of the presidential decree that allowed recruiting people with criminal records, since they had been convicted under terrorist and extremist articles," says the outlet.

In particular, in October 2022, Lema Okhaev, a 48-year-old resident of Grozny, was excluded from the above "Rosfinmonitoring" list. He was put on the list in 2011; and in 2003, he was convicted in the case of a terror act and attempt on law enforcers' lives. "It is known that Okhaev was sentenced to 13 years in a maximum security penal colony and was released after serving his sentence," the outlet writes.

In March 2022, Okhaev went to the SMO zone among Chechen fighters.

In 2023, the "Rosfinmonitoring" removed from the above list Khasan Arsakhanov, 34, a resident of Achkhoi-Martan, who had been convicted of participation in an illegal armed formation (IAF) and listed as a terrorist since the summer of 2011. In March 2022, Arsakhanov, like Okhaev, went to the SMO zone in Ukraine.

Another one removed from the "Rosfinmonitoring" list in December 2022 was Nikita Mitchenko, a 29-year-old "Akhmat" fighter from Bryansk. He was convicted of "falsely reporting an impending explosion" and was sentenced to 1.5 years of correctional labour.