The court extended the detention of the head of the Grozny “Memorial” Oyub Titiev

The Staropromyslovsky District Court of Grozny extended the detention of the head of the Chechen “Memorial” Oyub Titiev until June 9. This was reported in the telegram channel of the Memorial human rights center.

Titiev’s interests were represented at the hearing by lawyer Maria Dubrovina. Two other lawyers - Ilya Novikov and Pyotr Zaikin - left for Moscow for a press conference dedicated to the prosecution of their client. In their opinion, the meeting was scheduled for this very day specifically so that Titiev would be left without protection. It was for this case that Dubrovina remained in Chechnya. The judge rejected the request to postpone the trial.

In addition, the investigation plans to bring final charges against Titiev today.

• Oyub Titiev was detained on the morning of January 9. He was accused of drug possession - a bag of illegal substances was allegedly found in his car.

The arrest was extended on March 6. On March 19, the Supreme Court of Chechnya upheld this decision. Lawyer Pyotr Zaikin claims that the preliminary investigation authorities want to forcibly detain Titiev in order to achieve his self-incrimination. * 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. 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 March 13, an expert from the Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Chechnya came to the conclusion that the two seized rolling papers contained marijuana. On the night of January 17, unknown masked men set fire to the Memorial office in Ingushetia. 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 evening of January 22 in Makhachkala, unknown persons set fire to the car of the Memorial representative office in Dagestan. 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 March 29, the investigator refused to satisfy the request of Titiev’s lawyer to request recordings from surveillance cameras, which, according to the human rights activist, should show how the police first took him to the police department, and then took him back to the road, where they staged a search of the car and the discovery of her drugs.