In St. Petersburg, they tried to kidnap a Chechen who fled the republic. He is being persecuted due to suspicions of homosexuality

In St. Petersburg on July 13, several people tried to kidnap 20-year-old native of Chechnya Zelimkhan Akhmadov, who left the republic due to persecution related to suspicions of homosexuality. This is reported by Novaya Gazeta.

According to the publication, among the abductors was the father of the young man, businessman Eli Akhmadov, and also, presumably, police officers (the driver of the car where Akhmadov was put showed the guards a police officer's certificate).

As writes Fontanka , around noon on Vadim Shefner Street, eyewitnesses noticed how three people were forcibly dragging a man in handcuffs towards the parking lot, and contacted the police. Akhmadov himself managed to write a message to an employee of the "Russian LGBT Network" with the words "Help me." The police traced their route and found them in a hostel on Marata Street. The kidnappers and Zelimkhan Akhmadov were taken to the police.

According to Novaya Gazeta, Akhmadov fled Chechnya after security forces pursuing him told his relatives that he was gay. In April, an attempt was made to kidnap him in Moscow, and he turned to the Russian LGBT Network, which provided him with housing in St. Petersburg. Fontanka writes that Zelimkhan Akhmadov's father, along with two relatives, tracked down his son in St. Petersburg for about a week.

Update. As writes Fontanka , by nightfall all the detainees were released, while being “separated”. According to the newspaper, the father and son Akhmadov expressed "two opposite versions" of what happened to the police.

• In 2017, Novaya Gazeta reported on mass detentions of men in Chechnya on suspicion of homosexuality, abuse of them, and several murders. The authorities of Chechnya categorically denied the persecution of gays, as well as their existence in Chechnya. Later, a resident of Omsk, Maxim Lapunov, openly spoke about the persecution, who, according to his own words, was in an unofficial prison for gays in Chechnya for 12 days.