Investigators refused to open a case at the request of the head of the Chechen “Memorial”

In Chechnya, the Gudermes interdistrict investigative department did not initiate a criminal case at the request of the head of the Grozny branch of the Memorial Human Rights Center Oyub Titiev. Interfax reported this with reference to Memorial board member Oleg Orlov.

Earlier, Oyub Titiev stated that the found drugs were planted on him by police officers.

According to Orlov, the investigation lasted more than a month, and during this time investigators only interviewed the police officers who detained the human rights activist. The refusal order states that the testimony of law enforcement officers confirms “Titiev’s guilt in the crime charged against him,” although he has not yet been found guilty.

Zaikin plans to appeal the refusal in court. In addition, he plans to send a request to the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, to transfer the inspection to a higher level, outside of Chechnya.

Earlier, the Prosecutor General's Office reported that it had found no violations in the circumstances of Titiev's detention.

In mid-February, the investigation explained the lack of recordings of Titiev’s arrest by the fact that the surveillance cameras were not working that day.

Titiev himself said that on January 9 he was taken to the police department twice. For the first time, they tried to force a confession from him with threats. After refusing, he was taken back to the place of detention. Law enforcement officers searched the car again and found drugs.

Oyub Titiev was detained on the morning of January 9. The next day, the police kicked the human rights activist’s relatives out of the house. They were looking for his son and brother and threatened his family with trouble. On the evening of the same day, Titiev was accused of drug possession - a bag of prohibited substances was allegedly found in his car.

The court arrested the head of Memorial for two months; the pretrial detention period expires on March 9.

• On the evening of January 22 in Makhachkala, unknown persons set fire to the car of the Memorial representative office in Dagestan. A Dagestani lawyer traveled to Chechnya in it to help the detained head of the local branch, Oyub Titiev.

The next day, an SMS threat was sent to the number of an organization in Makhachkala: “Next Time, Together with You, We’ll Set Your Office on Fire” ( the original spelling has been preserved ). On January 19, a search was carried out at the organization’s Grozny office. During the investigation, police found cigarette butts that looked like cigarettes that had been gutted and then filled with something, as well as an energy drink can filled with ash. However, none of Memorial’s employees smokes. Journalists coming to the office do so exclusively on the balcony, putting cigarette butts in paper envelopes and not in an ashtray. On January 18, security forces also came to the owner of the premises in Grozny, which is rented by Memorial. They demanded to open the door to the organization’s office and convinced the woman that “she was wrong” because she was renting out the premises to human rights activists. * On the night of January 17, unknown masked people set fire to the Memorial office in Ingushetia.