Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation ignored 4 requests of the court in the case of the abduction in Moscow of a Dagestani by the Chechen security forces

On October 18, in the Perovsky District Court of Moscow, a court hearing was held on a complaint about the inaction of the regional department of the RF IC, which formally carried out an inspection on the application for the abduction of a native of Dagestan Ibragim Selimkhanov. He was detained in Moscow and taken to Chechnya by the security forces of Ramzan Kadyrov.

At the hearing, it turned out that the Investigative Committee received 4 requests from the court demanding to provide him with the materials of the pre-investigation check. However, the requested documents were never sent to the court. And the investigating department did not provide any explanations to the court, the press service of the crisis group “SK SOS” reports.

May 15, 2021 Chechen security forces kidnapped Dagestani Ibragim Selimkhanov was taken from Moscow and taken to Chechnya in order to force him to tell about the employees of the emergency assistance program of the Russian LGBT Network. After interrogations and threats, Selimkhanov managed to leave the republic. When, under the supervision of security officials, he was taken to his mother’s relatives living in Grozny, Selimkhanov imperceptibly left the house and hitchhiked back to Moscow. There he submitted an application for his abduction to the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Novogireevo district.

Information about the crime was transferred on June 29 to the Perovsk Investigation Department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation. However, the department did not conduct an investigation, but returned the documents back to the Ministry of Internal Affairs in August 2021.

On September 27, Chechen security forces broke into Ibragim’s relatives living in Grozny. They demanded to give them information about Selimkhanov’s whereabouts.

Human rights activists argue that to date, no procedural decisions have been made on the material of the check. According to them, the documents have not yet been sent to the prosecutor, who must resolve the dispute about jurisdiction in accordance with Part 8 of Art. 151 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation.

The Perovskiy court, announcing the absence of case materials from the RF IC, postponed the hearing of the complaint until November 11.

For the first time, Selimkhanov turned to the LGBT Network in the fall of 2020 in connection with violence from relatives due to his non-traditional sexual orientation. They helped him leave for Moscow, after which he was put on the federal wanted list. According to the young man, at the time of the abduction he was no longer on the wanted list, he lived and worked in the capital.

This is not the first time that the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation has not investigated the abduction and torture of representatives of the LGBTQ + community in the North Caucasus. So, in January 2020, Aminat Lorsanova applied to the Investigative Committee with a request to open a criminal case against her parents and doctors of the psychiatric clinic, where she was forcibly detained. According to the girl, no investigation was carried out on her statement.

Maksim Lapunov’s case was also not investigated, and his complaint about torture was rejected.

“In this case, the investigating authorities ignore the norms of the criminal procedural law, in fact, they evade both the verification of the crime report and the issuance of an appropriate procedural decision,” says lawyer Mark Alekseev, who cooperates with the SK SOS crisis group. He believes that the inaction of the investigators “may entail the loss of evidence in a probable criminal case.”