Russia adds Chechen human rights lawyer Abubakar Yangulbayev to 'terrorists and extremists' list

Russia's Federal Financial Monitoring Service (Rosfinmonitoring) has added Abubakar Yangulbayev, a former lawyer for the organization Crew Against Torture, to its list of terrorists and extremists, TV Rain reported on Tuesday.

The grounds for the decision have not been made public.

The Russian Telegram channel Baza reported in early July that Yangulbayev had been charged with “organizing extremist activity” in response to a video stream from the banned Chechen opposition movement Adat that he participated in.

The Abubakar family has a long-standing feud with the Chechen authorities, who have repeatedly threatened, imprisoned, and tortured its members. Abubakar Yangulbayev’s brother, Ibragim Yangulbayev, is allegedly one of the founders of Adat, and the brothers’ father, Saidi Yangulbayev, is a retired federal judge.

In early 2022, Chechen officers abducted their mother, Zarema Musayeva, in Nizhny Novgorod. She was later sentenced to 5.5 years in prison for allegedly using violence against police.

In early August 2023, Abubakar Yangulbayev reported that four of his relatives who lived in Chechnya had been forcibly sent to the war in Ukraine as “volunteers.”