Police detain and question 15 Makhachkala youngsters for links to 4 sisters who fled Dagestan

In Makhachkala, Dagestan police detained and questioned a group of 15 young people singled out for their “countercultural” interests, looking for information about the four sisters who recently fled Dagestan, escaping years of abuse and domestic violence.

People in civilian clothes — presumably, Center E agents — took the youngsters to a local police department in the evening on November 2, detaining them until 2 a.m. and interrogating them in a rough manner, using obscenity, and demanding information about the four escaped sisters and their common LGBTQ+ ties.

The interrogators’ aim was, apparently, to “uncover a local LGBTQ+ ‘cell’ that had ‘recruited’ the sisters and assisted in their escape.”

• The night before October 30, the Russian border guards at the Verkhny Lars checkpoint detained four young women traveling to Georgia from Dagestan. Hadijat Khazriyeva, Patimat Khazriyeva, Aminat Gazimagomedova, and Patimat Magomedova were all fleeing from years of abuse and violence in their family. All four were victims of female circumcision.
• The young women decided to escape when their relatives tried to get one of them to marry her cousin. The border guards detained all four until their relatives arrived to take them home by force. Human right activists and the media intervened in the situation. Ultimately, the four women were allowed to cross the Georgian border.

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