Member of the Human Rights Council of Chechnya: those who signed the letter to Chaika about torture in the police had no idea what they were signing

Kheda Saratova, a member of the Human Rights Council under the head of Chechnya, called reports about pressure on people who signed a letter to Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation Yuri Chaika about police torture and about their forced delivery to Grozny to an “action of repentance” “an absolute lie” (the action was reported on August 18 by "New Newspaper").

According to Saratova, she spoke with more than 60 signatories of the letter, and almost all of them “had no idea what the document they signed was about,” RIA Novosti reports.

“Having learned about this, they decided to turn to human rights activists so that we could help them rehabilitate themselves in the eyes of the public and not be punished for signing a provocative letter,” said Kheda Saratova.

After that, Saratov, in her own words, held a meeting with these people and the leadership of the Staropromyslovsky district and the local police. “I want to assure you that the conversation took place in an absolutely calm atmosphere. <…> There was and could not be any pressure on them,” she said.

Saratova also stated that, at the request of the head of the HRC under the President of the Russian Federation, Mikhail Fedotov, she checked the information about the police beating of the relatives of Magomed Taramov and Jamalai Tazbiev, who are on trial for their intention to leave to fight in Syria, and it was not confirmed.

• The letter from the residents of the village of Krasnaya Turbina to Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika is connected with the case of Magomed Taramov and Jamalai Tazbiev, who are on trial for their intention to leave to fight in Syria. The letter refers to forcing them to self-incrimination under torture. According to Novaya Gazeta, after the publication of the letter, the relatives of Taramov and Tazbiev were beaten by the police, forcing the defendants to refuse the services of a lawyer and plead guilty.
• According to Novaya Gazeta, which wrote extensively about the case , Taramov and Tazbiev were detained at the end of January during raids provoked by the December killings of policemen in Grozny . For about a month and a half they were held at the Staropromyslovsky District Department of Internal Affairs, and in March they were officially detained and charged. Both pleaded guilty, but at the trial they said that they were tortured by the police.
• In April, Kheda Saratova commented on Novaya Gazeta's first publication about the torture and murder of alleged gays in "secret prisons" in Chechnya and stated that if she had received a complaint about it, she would "not even consider it." Later, she said that the people from these Novaya publications were not gays, but suspected terrorists.