The leader of the Ingush protests has once again extended his stay in a pre-trial detention center

The Essentuki city court extended the arrest until December 25 of one of the defendants in the "Ingush case", the leader of the protests, Akhmed Pogorov. This was reported to OVD-Info by the Memorial Human Rights Center.

Pogorov is charged under articles on participation in an extremist community (part 2 of article 282.1 of the Criminal Code) and organizing life-threatening violence against police officers (part 2 of article 318 of the Criminal Code with the application of part 3 of article 33 of the Criminal Code).

After being detained in February 2021, Pogorov was placed in custody as a preventive measure, but on May 25, the activist was transferred to house arrest due to deteriorating health.

The next day, Pogorov was hospitalized, and the security forces took him straight from the hospital for interrogation. On the evening of May 26, the court in Essentuki again changed the preventive measure to imprisonment in a pre-trial detention center. On June 23, the arrest was extended for another three months.

Pogorov is defended by lawyer Magomed Gagiev, who cooperates with Memorial HRC.

• The criminal case against Pogorov was initiated after protests against the transfer of land from Ingushetia to Chechnya on March 26–27, 2019.
• According to the Memorial Human Rights Center, as of June 3, 2021, 51 people were prosecuted in connection with the 2019 rally in Magas, and prosecution against three of them was stopped. More than 30 defendants in the "Ingush case" were sentenced to terms ranging from five months to three and a half years.
• In September 2018, the authorities of Ingushetia and Chechnya signed an agreement to change the border between the republics, after which protests began in Ingushetia. On March 26, 2019, about 10 thousand people came to the rally in Magas. About two thousand protesters remained on the square all night. In the morning they began to be dispersed, as a result of which clashes broke out between the security forces and the protesters .