Thank you for alive

The criminal case against Oyub Titiev - revenge for investigating the mass execution in Grozny

On January 9, in Chechnya, my friend, head of the Chechen office of Memorial, was detained in Oyub Titiev. For many years we were preparing for this situation, we knew that this would happen. The last time we saw, Oyub spoke about this scenario: "Throw drugs." And I added to myself: "And this is at best."

On the emergency situation, Oyub had a “Estemirova bracelet”. The device that Swedish human rights activists invented after the abduction and murder of the Chechen human rights activist Natasha Estemirova in 2009. I will never forget how colleagues from the Memorial rushed about in search of Natasha. As I repeated to Natasha’s daughter Mantra: “Mom is alive, we will find her soon.” As we later found her. On the side of the federal highway "Caucasus" with five bullets. Two - in the head.

... The Swedish button-SOS is designed in order to establish the geolocation of the owner of the bracelet at the time of danger. For many years I made fun of this device.

“You won’t have time to press it, but you will help you very much like yourself,” I assured Oyuba.

But he stubbornly wore this bracelet on his hand, taking it off only during trips beyond the borders of Chechnya. The Oyub did not press the button.

We were incredibly lucky. The detention saw the witness. His friend, with whom Oyub had to meet on the morning of January 9th. Without waiting, a friend drove along the highway towards Grozny and saw a car and Oyub himself. And six employees of the Chechen police searching for the car. Oyub and at that moment retained its amazing composure. He made a gesture to his friend so that he would not stop, did not get out of the car to drive past. Savior a person.

In fact, Oyuba Titiev was detained that morning twice. As he told the court during the election of a preventive measure, for the first time he was stopped by two traffic police officers, and while one checked the trunk, the second slipped a black bag with marijuana under the front seat. After that, Oyub Titiev was taken to Kurchaloevsky OMVD. There he was offered to make a “confession”, but Oyub Titiev categorically refused.

“You don’t want it, then it will be“ according to the law, ”the Chechen police officers told Oyub, realizing that the marijuana found without witnesses would not work as evidence.

Then Titiev was given the keys to the car and released by putting a police officer in civilian clothes in the car, who kept “material evidence” in their hands. For reliability, apparently. So they - Oyub, a policeman and a package - and detained for the second time - already “according to the law”, with the witnesses.

Two hours later, we knew for sure that he was delivered to the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the Kurchaloevsky district. This is the "native" OMVD Oyub. And this is a very terrible place in which many Chechens died. The involvement of the employees of the Kurchaloevsky police in the brutal murder in 2009 of Chechen activists Zarema Sadulaeva and Alik Dzhabrailov in 2009 was absolutely established. We suspected Kurchaloevsky of involvement in the reprisal against Natasha Estemirova. These suspicions have not yet been removed.

The Kurchaloevsky police were then headed by a relative of the head of Chechnya - Hamzat Edelgiriev. This man, a completely frantic manner, was afraid of Kadyrov himself. In the end, after the next blowing away authority of Kadyrov, the tricks of Edelgiriyes were removed from his post. It was then that the Kurchaloevsky OMVD stopped flickering in terrible news from Chechnya.

Six hours of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Chechnya were denied by the very fact of the detention of Oyub Titiev. A lawyer who quickly arrived at the Kurchaloevsky OMVD was not allowed to Oyub for eight hours - the gross violation of the right to defense. And only when we distributed information that the detention of Oyub was seen by witnesses, and the employees of the Kurchaloevsky OMVD unofficially confirmed its presence in the building, we stopped hiding this fact. And they announced article 228 - storage of narcotic drugs. At that moment, we all experienced something similar to gratitude to the Chechen Ministry of Internal Affairs: thank you for alive ...

Oyub in Moscow: "I feel bad today because I have not run out of my obligatory 10 kilometers."

Oyub in Prague: "I ran 10 kilometers today, Prague is beautiful in the early morning!"

Oyub in Stockholm (terribly cold, by the way):

- ran? - I ask, wrapping in a sweater, coat, mittens, which have already burned in a cigarette in the wind.

- But what about! - answers enough, with a soft reproach in his voice. “Can't you quit smoking?”

- And you can’t take care of your knees. Running on asphalt is very harmful! - I joke and envy his willpower a little.

Before the war, a physical education teacher. Children's Coach in Wrestling. Every day is a run, every other day - training in the gym. 60 years to man. What, to hell, marijuana?! Funny…

We made friends with Oyub from the first meeting. Natasha Estemirova brought me to Gudermes (then Oyub was headed by the Hudermmes office of Memorial, which had to be closed in 2015 after the Kadyrovtsy attack). I had to go to Yalhoy-Mokhk. It was there, and now there is a secret prison. One of many in Chechnya. I was just starting to get used to the republic after the murder of Ani Politkovskaya. What could I without my dear and desperate Chechen friends? Natasha, Oyuba and those whom I cannot name. Natasha is already possible. She is killed. Oyuba is also possible. He, for many years, who had done incredibly courageous work and never shone publicly (“I still need to work, I do not need to know about me”), on January 9, those who decided to deal with him were lit up. The solution is deeply erroneous. With far -reaching consequences.

From the first meeting, Oyub became my guardian angel.

I remember our crazy trip to the village of Baitarka of the Nozha-Yurt district. When the Chechen authorities, contrary to all Chechen customs and concepts of mercy, were married to the 54-year-old head of Nozha-Yurtovsky District Department of Internal Affairs of Guchigov, 17-year-old Kradu-Luiz Goylabiev. In May 2015, at the request of the relatives of the girl, I published an appeal to Ramzan Kadyrov. We thought he would help. After all, Ramzan categorically forbade to take his second wives (and, in fact, in his mistress) minors. I, naive, completely sincerely counted on Kadyrov’s help. He chose to turn the situation into a farce, just to demonstrate that the “new newspaper” “everything is lying”. The girl and her family were forced to agree to this marriage. The elderly groom was forced to divorce his first wife, from whom he had four adults already children. They played the "Wedding of the Century."

I arrived in Chechnya, and I had to go to the mountains, where the Goylabiyev family lived. I could not risk the familiar Chechens. I did not have to count on the aid of someone else. It was my personal business. My personal story. Oyub, by some miracle, found me in Dagestan Khasavyurt, where I was going to take a taxi, and said: "You will not go alone." We remember, we still argued and even shouted a little at each other. Then, of course, they made peace, ate a miracle ( Dagestan cakes. - Ed. ) And the Chechen mountains rushed into incredible beauty. We arrived, talked with whom it turned out, and then at his “Lada” they raced in the rapidly advancing darkness along the Nozhai-Yurt Serpanth from the cars that pursued us.

It was after this trip to Baitarka that he was extremely clearly made to understand what could be a Chechen for helping me. Oyub never told me exactly who threatened him.

He talked about the threats as a scale: yellow is not serious, red - it is dangerous, but you can live and work. Orange was only twice.

It was after the “Wedding of the Century” that he finally agreed to take at least his family outside Chechnya. Unfortunately, the family soon returned and reunited. This is a very friendly family. Wonderful wife, daughters, son.

Throughout 2017, an orange burned on his inner semaphore of threats and no longer switched. That is why it was clear to all January 9 that trouble had happened to Oyub. And only I, as then with Natasha, repeated my mantra: “They will let him go. He will return to us now. ”

The deeper I plunge into Chechnya, the more I understand that friendship and work must be bred. In recent years, I traveled to the Grozny Memorial after I was working out a business trip. She almost stopped using the information of Oyub, rather, he herself supplied him with information obtained from her sources. He was offended, of course. But I became too dangerous for my friends in Chechnya. More precisely, friends were more expensive than any information.

All last year, the Memorial and I almost parallel, without intersecting, without exchanging information, worked on one terrible topic. In January, on the territory of the regiment of the patrol service. Akhmat Kadyrov occurred mass execution. At least 27 people detained on suspicion of involvement in extremism were killed without trial.

We reduced our data only when among the Chechens, relatives of the dead, there were daredevils who submitted official statements in the name of the Commissioner for Human Rights Tatyana Moskalkova and the chairman of the Investigative Committee of Russia Alexander Bastrykin. The pre -investigation verification of the data published by the New Gazeta and confirmed by the investigation of the Memorial has been going on for nine months. During this time, the death of four people from the list 27 was officially stated. The fate of the rest has remained unknown for a year. There are no doubts that these people are dead. That is why the Russian authorities cannot decide to terminate the audit without initiating a criminal case. And they, apparently, cannot be decided to initiate a criminal case and a normal investigation of this terrible crime.

He could do what all visitors to Chechnya journalists and human rights activists are limited today. He could speak with people living in the republic. In this sense, the detention of Oyub and his criminal prosecution is a blow. A blow knocking down - but not fatal. The investigation of the “January execution” will certainly continue.

Despite the fact that the loud story of last year with extrajudicial reprisals in Chechnya was not brought to the Investigative Committee to the initiation of a criminal case, the world public believed the victims, journalists and human rights activists. And the lack of adequate legal actions of the state in the case of the persecution of gays in Chechnya and the “January execution” only strengthened the released facts.

The result was very painful for the Chechen government. At the end of last year, Ramzan Kadyrov was included in the open part of the Magnitsky List with the wording: "For involvement in extrajudicial reprisals, torture and human rights violations." A day after inclusion in the “Magnitsky List”, Ramzan Kadyrov’s accounts in the social networks Facebook and Instagram were blocked.

This extent can be treated as you like, but in the Chechen leadership, the excommunication from Instagram caused shock and rage. Kadyrov lost not only a “favorite toy”. This was his personal media with an audience of more than 4 million subscribers. And even more than that: Instagram Kadyrov has long turned into a monstrously effective way of spreading the whole world of fear of the Chechen security officials.

The blocking of Kadyrov’s accounts led to the general and already voluntary closure of his accounts by all odious Chechens. And the effectiveness of the “Chechen force”, thus, was sharply reduced. Bravular statements on the creation of their own regional social network and the transition to Russian social networks look sorry for. The number of “friends” in VKontakte with Kadyrov during the blocking decreased from 20 to 18 people.

On December 25, the speaker of the Chechen parliament Magomed Daudov made an official message posted on the website of the Grozny Inform agency: “I responsibly declare that one of those who are behind the situation related to sanctions and blocking the heads of the Czech Republic on social networks are pseudo -lawyers who work in all kinds of“ committees ”and“ centers ”,“ journalists ”itself False media who receive “prestigious prizes” and “thirty silver” in Washington itself and in other Western countries for their subversive anti -Russian activities ... What, we will continue to see how they are trying to destabilize the situation in Russia, to sow hostility in our society? <...> If a moratorium would not have been in Russia, the enemies of the people should follow the "Salam Aleikum" and that’s it. "

After such “Salam Aleikum” and all ”it remained to wait for specific actions. And in Chechnya all these years there was only one target for attack. To sweep anger and revenge. Oyub Titiev was detained exactly two weeks after this statement, on the very first working day of 2018.