Situation with abducted Zarema Musayeva ‘develops in the legal field’ – HRC

Chairman of the Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation Valery Fadeev said that the department is monitoring the development of the situation with Zarema Musayeva, who was kidnapped by the Chechen security forces.

According to him, at the moment, “from a legal point of view, the situation is generally clear.” Fadeev said that, presumably, Musaeva would be released after the end of the sentence imposed on her by the court – 15 days of arrest for petty hooliganism.

“We believe that the situation will continue to develop in the legal field,” Fadeev stressed.

On January 20, in Nizhny Novgorod, Chechen security forces broke into the apartment of the father of the ex-lawyer of the “Committee against Torture” Abubakar Yangulbaev, a former judge of the Supreme Court of Chechnya Saidi Yangulbaev. They kidnapped his wife Zarema Musaeva under the pretext that she was allegedly Grozny. Yangulbaev himself could not be kidnapped, since he has judicial immunity status. Musayeva has type 2 diabetes and needs insulin injections. Despite this, she was not allowed to take her medicines and even warm clothes with her.

January 25 and 26 “Committee against Torture” published two videos of Musayeva’s abduction. The footage shows the woman sitting on the floor in the elevator, unable to get up. After that, the security forces take her outside and lead her to the car through the snow, despite the fact that the woman is not wearing shoes.

The police and FSB officers of Nizhny Novgorod did not respond in any way to the requests of Musayeva’s relatives for help and to the allegations of abduction. In the Kremlin declared that they prefer not to believe this information.

January 26 Commissioner for Human Rights in the Chechen Republic Mansur Soltaev published video of him calling the special detention center where Musayeva is in order to find out about her state of health. In response to this, Musaeva’s son Abubakar Yangulbaev in his Telegram channel published a number of questions to Soltaev. He expressed doubts that he had called Musayeva, since the number of the called subscriber was not shown in the frame. He also asked why Soltaev did not ask the woman about her sugar level and the type of insulin she was receiving, and drew attention to the fact that there was a cutscene in the video.