Elena Milashina provides testimony to Chechen detective

Novaya Gazeta's journalist says she was threatened with being murdered should she return to region

A detective from Chechnya has obtained testimony from Elena Milashina, a reporter with Novaya Gazeta who had been recently beaten up in Grozny, Crew Against Torture reports.

Milashina has told the detective that the attackers threatened to kill her should she ever return to Chechnya. “We already beat you up once, you didn’t get it, now is your second warning, and there will be no third one,” she quoted the attackers.

A criminal investigation was launched after the attack by the Investigative Committee in Chechnya. No suspects were named so far.

Novaya Gazeta’s longtime reporter Elena Milashina and lawyer Alexander Nemov were travelling to Chechnya’s Grozny on 4 July to cover the final session of the trial against Zarema Musayeva, the mother of two Chechen anti-Kadyrov activists. As the Milashina and Nemov exited the airport in Chechnya’s capital, they took a cab that was stopped a few minutes later on the highway by a group of armed individuals who proceeded to severely beat up and humiliate the two.

The attackers threatened to shoot Milashina and Nemov and put a gun against their heads. Then, the group of 10 to 15 men, as per Milashina’s estimate, beat up the two with polypropylene pipes. They also stabbed Nemov in the leg with a knife and shaved Milashina’s head bald. The perpetrators said that the attack came because of Milashina’s and Nemov’s human rights activism.

The two were taken back to Moscow aboard a plane the next day, accompanied by Novaya Gazeta’s chief editor Dmitry Muratov. Elena Milashina soon underwent a checkup in a Moscow hospital. She was diagnosed with a closed head injury, up to 14 carpal bone fractures, and multiple haematomas.