Chairman of the HRC: the delivery of judge Yangulbaev’s wife, who was forcibly taken to Chechnya, took place “in accordance with the norms of the Code of Criminal Procedure”

Presidential Adviser and Chairman of the Human Rights Council (HRC) Valery Fadeev said that the delivery of the wife of the former Chechen judge Zarema Musayeva to Chechnya took place “in accordance with the norms of the Criminal Procedure Code.” Fadeev’s commentary was published on the HRC website.

“At the moment, from a legal point of view, the situation is generally clear; the wife of S.V. Yangulbaev, Zarema Musaeva, was brought to Grozny as a witness in a criminal case in accordance with the norms of the Criminal Procedure Code,” noted the chairman of the HRC.

Chechen security forces detained Musaeva on January 20 in Nizhny Novgorod and took her to Grozny for questioning in a fraud case in which she is a witness.

“[The police] burst in, beat Zarema [Musaeva], hit the lawyer in the face, drove us and our colleagues into a back room, showered us with rude obscene language, also hit Saidi Yangulbaev and took Zarema [Musaeva] away,” the lawyer described what happened “ Committee against Torture" Sergei Babinets. In addition, as human rights activists reported, Yangulbaev’s wife has diabetes, and the police did not take insulin or warm clothes with them.

According to the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, when Musayeva was taken to Grozny, she attacked a policeman and “almost lost his eye,” because of this, a report was drawn up against her for petty hooliganism and she was arrested for 15 days. “Currently, she is in a special detention center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Chechen Republic, where, in accordance with the law, she can be visited by a prosecutor, lawyer and members of the public monitoring commission of the Chechen Republic,” Fadeev added. The “Committee against Torture” noted that the staff of the special detention center did not allow lawyers to see Musayeva.

Kadyrov also accused Yangulbaev’s family of terrorism and said: “This family has a place either in prison or underground.” Yangulbaev’s eldest son Ibragim said that their family left Chechnya after he, along with his brother and father, were kidnapped and tortured at Kadyrov’s residence because of critical posts on social networks. A few days after the security forces’ visit to Nizhny Novgorod, Musaeva’s husband and her daughter left Russia.