Speaker of Chechen parliament reportedly announces blood feud against blogger who criticized Akhmat Kadyrov

Update: On March 12, the press secretary to Chechen government leader Ramzan Kadyrov denied that Magomed Daudov had announced a blood feud. Alvi Karimov told TASS that the politician’s words had been deliberately mistranslated from Chechen and that Daudov had only intended to “call on [Abdurakhmanov] to take responsibility” for his words.

Tumso Abdurakhmanov, a Chechen blogger living in Poland, wrote on the social platform Telegram that Magomed Daudov, who leads the Chechen parliament, announced a blood feud against him on March 9. Daudov made the threat after Abdurakhmanov called Akhmat Kadyrov, the father of current Chechen government head Ramzan Kadyrov, “a traitor.” The blogger, who has 140,000 online followers, claims that he left Chechnya due to a separate conflict with the Kadyrov family. The Chechen government has accused him in turn of taking part in the war in Syria.

Daudov announced his threat against Abdurakhmanov live on Instagram, Kavkazsky Uzel reported. The BBC Russian Service translated his statement into Russian, indicating that the parliamentarian said roughly the following: “I’m announcing officially, Tumso, that my brothers and I — and you know who my brothers are — officially, due to the words you said about Akhmat-hadji, we are announcing a blood feud against you. […] We aren’t planning to kill you; we’ll just make you have a little surprise fun. From now on, when you go to sleep, make sure you’ve locked your door.” The blogger told the BBC that he considers the threat against him “realistic and dangerous.” Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov responded to queries about the situation by saying that “no legal basis for the tradition of blood feuds currently exists.”