Council of the protesting Chechens: now go to the police for protection

Once again, the office of the committee against torture has once again been defeated in Grozny. The ordinary residents of Chechnya participated in this. The very ones whom the guys from Nizhny Novgorod, risking themselves, defended all these years

*The text of Elena Milashina “In Grozny attacked the office of the committee against torture”, published on the site 3.06.2015, significantly updated

On June 3, the second time in six months was defeated by the office of a consolidated mobile group of human rights activists working in Chechnya.

The special operation was under the guise of a rally of residents of Chechnya, outraged by the murder of Dzhambulat Dadaev (hiding in Chechnya from the federal wanted list, which resisted and shot in April by Stavropol police as a result of an unsuccessful attempt to detain).

On June 3, a large -scale event was planned in Grozny against the Russian media (New Gazeta, Echo of Moscow, Kommersant, Rain and Open Russia), which regularly criticize the Chechen authorities. The idea of conducting an act - in fact - information aggression arose after the publication by the Kommersant newspaper investigation about the Akhmat Kadyrov fund. However, at the last moment, this action was canceled - according to the News, received an appropriate order from the Administration of the President of Russia.

The information that the format of the action and the venue was changed was received by the head of the consolidated mobile group Igor Kalyapin late in the evening of June 2.

The informant warned that the protest may be a cover for aggressive actions against human rights defenders.

“Our office has already been burned in December last year - after I applied with a statement in the TFR and the Prosecutor General’s Office with a request to verify the legality of the statements of the head of Chechnya about the destruction of the houses of relatives of the militants. After the fire, we restored our office for five months. They strengthened safety, put new video cameras, gratings and continuous blinds on the windows, armored doors. Just in case, early in the morning of June 3, our employees also stocked up with buckets of sand - so that there was an opportunity to extinguish the fire if there is an attempt to set fire to the office again. ”

By 10 in the morning, at the intersection of Mira Avenue and the street of the Rosa Luxembro, at the house where the SMG office is located, a crowd gathered, 300-500 people. People asked each other why they were brought here. Among the audience were mostly women. On home -made, obviously in a hurry, inaccurately made posters, it was written: “Why are the Kalyapins silent?”, “The killers to answer”, “Who will return the son of the mother of Dzhambulat Dadaev?” etc. There was no police, which was supposed to protect public order during the protest campaign, on the spot. The organization of the crowd was carried out by people in civilian clothes with walkie -talkies in their hands. At 10:10, the crowd of protesters in an organized manner was redirected from Mira Avenue to the courtyard of house No. 19 on the street of the Rosa Luxembro, in which the combined mobile group was rented by two apartments.

This rally did not have the leading. There were no speakers. Many of the audience still did not understand why they were brought here.

Very soon, a group of people appeared in the crowd in hoods, black glasses and hospital masks. In their hands were sledges, crowbars and grinder. The first of their actions was damaged by the human rights activists - the wheels pierced it. Then, at about 10:30, one of the women began to scream hysterically: "Why are Kalyapins silent?" Her cry was picked up by the crowd. Someone fired several times into the air from the pistol. A mask man climbed onto the second floor, on the balcony of the kitchen of the apartment of employees of the SMG. He dismantled the outdoor observation camera. Apparently, the pogromers were well aware that the office, apartment and the SMG machine were equipped with video surveillance. The pogromers had spray cans with paint, which they sprayed onto the cameras to disappear.

At about 11 o’clock, the door to the SMG office was hacked by a grinder. At this moment, the senior group - human rights activist Albert Kuznetsov tried to leave the office to talk with the organizers of the rally. But at the moment when he opened the door, they hit it on the outside with a sledgehammer. Then the human rights activists decided to evacuate and were able to get out of the office through the windows and leave the scene. One of the employees damaged his hand, jumping from the second floor. Having thus getting out of the office blocked by the elaborators, the SMG employees stumbled upon a policeman. They asked for help, but he categorically refused to go around the house, enter the entrance and stop the crime. The attackers, meanwhile, began to destroy the property of the newly repaired office, and then began to cut the door to the SMG apartment with a grinder.

All the actions of the offenders were recorded by cameras installed in the apartment and office of the consolidated mobile group (the video are freely available).

The timing of events proves that the Grozny police did not respond to a call, recorded by Grozny OMVD at 10:40, did not arrive at the scene, thereby providing the pogrom with complete freedom of action.

The attackers not only defeated the office and apartment of the SMG, but also issued all the equipment, documents and personal belongings of human rights defenders. On the street, they finished off the human rights defenders with a sledgehammer, removing DVRs from it and throwing home -made posters left by participants in the protest rally in a salon (for memory?).

After a well -organized special operation against the consolidated mobile group came to an end, a crowd of protesters moved to the Susk building in Chechnya. People stood under a concrete fence of a tightly guarded building for another ten minutes and parted. Attempts to attack and defeat the investigative department in Chechnya were not taken.

At about 12 o’clock, journalists and Chechen human rights activists, headed by the head of the Council of Human Rights under the head of Chechnya Timur Aliyev, arrived in the defeated office of the consolidated mobile group. At that time, there was still no police at the scene. So, in violation of the Federal Police Law, the investigative-operational group did not arrive at the scene. Both apartments were not sealed, no signs of the work of forensic experts (to collect prints of fingers, shoes and other evidence left by the pogroms) at the scene.

The demonstrative absence of any reaction of the Chechen police at the pogrom in the center of Grozny was the main topic of discussion at a special meeting of the Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation (the head of the consolidated mobile group Igor Kalyapin is a member of the HRC).

Kalyapin called the statements of the head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov that the human rights activists themselves were to blame for the pogrom of his office (according to Kadyrov, human rights activists refused to go out to the rally participants and explain why the circumstances of the unsuccessful detention of Jambulat Dadaev, which provoked participants in the rally for the attack).

Also, Igor Kalyapin told how much time the human rights activists spent to get to the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Chechnya and on the hotline of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation. Igor Kalyapin himself repeatedly called the acting Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Chechen Republic Alaudinov, but he simply did not answer calls. When Grozny was finally able to get through to the police, the human rights activists said: “We now have many challenges, we will come to you when we serve all other challenges.”

The head of the Council for Human Rights under the head of Chechnya Timur Aliyev, who specially flew to Moscow for this meeting, left all questions on the pogrom of the SMG office. He devoted his performance to Dzhambulat Dadaev. He was very indignant that the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation covers the criminal actions of the Stavropol police officers. The fact that Stavropol police officers could not achieve the issuance of Dadaev, who was suspected of a serious crime from Chechnya in the federal wanted list, Aliyev did not comment on.

The performance of the representative of the Federal Ministry of Internal Affairs Vadim Borisovich Gaidov was also surprised. According to him, employees of the OMVD of the Terrible arrived at the scene immediately, all the necessary investigative actions were carried out, more than 30 people were detained on suspicion of their involvement in the pogrom.

However, to the request of members of the HRC to submit a list of detained guides refused. He knew neither circumstances nor the time for the detention of participants in the action - nothing at all.
“When I worked as a teacher, I put a deuce for such an answer,” concluded a member of the HRC Andrei Babushkin.

Meanwhile, Novaya Gazeta managed to find out that no detainees were delivered to any IVS department of the Grozny yesterday. Also at the disposal of Novaya Gazeta there is a video from the SMG apartment made on June 4. On the video frames it is clearly seen that no investigative actions were carried out in the apartment. Access to the apartment, which is considered the place of the incident, is still free.

According to Gaidov, a criminal case on the fact of an organized attack on the office of human rights activists, the inaction of the police, the destruction and damage of property has not yet been instituted. Also, Gaidov could not provide the HRC members with any information about the progress of the criminal investigation, initiated by the December arson of the SMG office.

“Now there is a check, the results of which will make a decision to institute or refuse to institute criminal proceedings. The audit is under the personal control of the acting Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Czech Republic of Apti Alaudinov, ”Gaidov said.

It must be said that it was Mr. Alaudinov last December that told employees of the consolidated mobile group, which cannot guarantee the security of Russian human rights activists working in Chechnya.