“You were warned. Leave from here and don't write anything "

In Chechnya, the journalist of Novye Elena Milashin and lawyer Alexander Nemova was brutally beaten

Today, early in the morning, unknown people attacked the journalist of Novaya Gazeta Elena Milashin and lawyer Alexander Nemova on the way from the airport to Grozny. Milashina came to Chechnya on a business trip: she was supposed to cover the process of sentencing in the case of Zamya Musaeva - the wife of federal judge and mother of Chechen opposition and human rights activists Abubakar and Ibrahim Yangulbaev.

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Nemov for a long time acted as a defender in the case of a 53-year-old woman, stolen by Chechen security forces and accused of applying violence to a representative of the authorities and fraud. “The defense awaits the excuse by the court of Zarema,” the lawyer wrote a few hours before the meeting.

At 11:30 Moscow time, the district court in Grozny sentenced Musaev to five and a half years in prison. Milashin and Nemov did not get to the meeting.

What's happened

The car, on which Milashin and Nemov went to Grozny, was blocked by armed people in three cars. Elena and Alexander were brutally beaten, selected equipment and documents. Nemov says that the attackers threatened to shoot them and put pistols to their heads.

After the attack, the victims were taken to the hospital. Milashina diagnosed closed head injury, and fingers on both hands are broken. She feels bad and often loses consciousness, the team against torture said . In the photo, after the attack by Milashina, the head and face is flooded with green.

“Classic abduction, as before all this happened. It’s just that it hasn’t happened for a long time. They pressed, threw the taxi driver out of his car, climbed to us, bent their heads, they tied my hands, put my knees, a gun to my head.

Somehow they did everything nervously, they couldn’t tie their hands, ”said Milashina herself from the hospital.

The attackers injured his leg, Nemov: he received a knife wound. The criminals stated that what happened was the result of human rights activities Milashina and Nemov. “You were warned. Leave from here and do not write anything, ”the attackers threatened .

“Both beat their feet, arms, polypropylene pipes, recalled them with their work, courts, processes about which Elena Milashina wrote. This is clearly not a gangster attack - this is an attack for their activities, ” said Sergey Babinets, who is in the hospital with Milashina and Nemov, the head of the“ Torture Torture ”.

At the request of the editorial office of Novaya Gazeta, Tatyana Moskalkova, the Commissioner for Human Rights, intervened. After a telephone conversation, Moskalkova with the head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov, it was decided to transfer Milashin and Nemov to a hospital in Beslan. In an ambulance, they were accompanied by the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Chechen Republic Mansur Soltaev.

According to the latest information, now Milashin and Nemov are located in the North Caucasus multidisciplinary medical center in Beslan.

On the frames published by the publication "Sapa", it is clear that Milashina continues to periodically lose consciousness.

Reaction

“He called the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Republic in North Ossetia, transferred [wishes] to further health to Milashina. She was completely examined, everything is fine. It was a daring, sabotage provocation against the republic, ”said Mansur Soltaev, Commissioner for Human Rights in Chechnya.

“Attacks on journalists (their positions regardless of their positions) are criminal and unacceptable. The State Duma Committee on Inform Policy is completely in solidarity in this with the SDR and HRC. We will also send an appeal to the Prosecutor General and the TFR to take this investigation for special control! ” - said State Duma deputy Alexander Hinshtein.

“The attack on a journalist and a lawyer in Chechnya require a strict reaction of law enforcement agencies,” said Senator Andrei Klishas.

“It is difficult to comment on what happened to journalist Elena Milashina and lawyer Nemov. This is prohibitive horror. They beat, cut (with a knife), tortured (broke their fingers), mocked (wandered baldly, doused with green). So do not do men. So do people do this, ”said the human rights activist and journalist Eva Merkacheva

Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of Chechnya-the region where the attack was made,-wrote in his telegram channel: “We will figure it out. He instructed competent services to make every effort to establish the identities of the attackers. The bodies began work immediately after the report of what happened. ”

Politkovskaya student

Elena Milashina has been working in Novaya for more than 25 years, since 1997. According to colleagues, she came to the newspaper with the intention of writing about “animals and culture”, but life was different.

In 2000, the editorial office sent Milashin to the base of the Kursk submarine - Vidyevo. The task of the journalist was to talk with the families of the dead sailors and collect a report about what happened. A series of materials about the Kursk submarine was the first serious investigation of Milashina, for which she received the Golden Feather of Russia. “She arrived there and saw that they just drowned the submarine,” recall colleagues, “still no one knows about Kursk more than she.”

Another sign of Milashina was the investigation of the terrorist attack in Beslan . Day a day, September 1, 2004, a journalist flew to North Ossetia and became the first to report a real number of victims. “The editors of Profigel, doubted, scratched her turnip, but in the end published a figure transmitted by Lenka,” said colleagues. - Beslan, she investigated from and to. Today, we know in permissions about what happened in Beslan, precisely thanks to Lena. ”

One of the areas of work by Milashina was always the topic of violations of human rights in Chechnya - the continuation of the case of Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist of the “new”, whose murder Russian investigation cannot (or does not want?) To reveal for 17 years.

In 2017, another iconic series of Milashina materials was released - about the extrajudic executions of gays in Chechnya. Then the New Gazeta published a list of at least 27 men who died at the hands of the Chechen security officials. After these publications, Milashin received a huge number of threats.

In the course of work on Milashin, they attacked more than once: she was threatened, wanted to death and demanded to stop engaged in journalistic activities. Against the backdrop of threats in February 2022, she left Russia.

“In connection with the special relations lined up between the federal authorities and the head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, due to numerous personal threats thrown in the last days with prominent representatives of the Chechen Republic to the observer of Novye Elena Milashina, the editors decided on a business trip Elena Milashina outside the Russian Federation. Elena follows security protocols approved by the editorial office. Her location will not affect the coverage of the topic of human rights in Chechnya, ”the editorial office of Novaya Gazeta published such a statement on February 3, 2022.

Soon after Milashin left, she returned back to Russia.

The case of Zarema Musaeva

Today, Milashina arrived in Chechnya again to continue the cycle of materials about Zarem Musaeva. Musaeva is the wife of the former judge of the Supreme Court of retired Sayy Yangulbaev and the mother of Chechen human rights activists Abubakar and Ibrahim Yangulbaev.

Human rights activists associate the abduction of Musaeva with the activities of her son Abubakar Yangulbaev, ex-employee of the North Caucasus branch of the “team against torture”. On the anniversary of his mother’s arrest, he published a video with an appeal to exchange her for himself.

“For this year, my mother’s health is only worsening. It is difficult for her to be imprisoned, and she should not be there in any case. She should not be responsible for the actions of her sons. And you, if a man, Kadyrov, if you consider yourself an personification of maximum masculinity in this country, you must let it go. And since it so happened that we have the rules of war and the laws in Russia and Chechnya do not apply, then let's exchange it for me. No need to touch women. Take me instead of her, ”said the young man.

For more than a year and a half, Musaeva was in a pre -trial detention center in Grozny: in January 2022, the Chechen security officials abducted her from an apartment in Nizhny Novgorod and took her to the republic. Then the case of a 53-year-old woman caused a huge resonance in Russian and world media. Personnel , which shows how unknown people bring Musaev from the apartment, lead barefoot in the snow and forcibly put them in a car with Chechen numbers, even shocked the Kremlin.

“Well, in general, a fantastic story, of course, we prefer not to believe such messages without any evidence. We live in a very untruthful time, ”said Presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov, then.

The day after the abduction, the incident was commented by Ramzan Kadyrov,saying that "this family is waiting for either in prison or underground." “I know the mood in society. So far, at least one Chechen, enjoying life freely, will no longer be able to walk the members of this family, the honor of every representative of our people is so deeply hurt. Remember this always, Yangulbaev, ”Kadyrov wrote then.

Three days after the abduction of Musaeva, it became known that the woman was in a special -reception in Grozny. According to the Minister of National Policy of Chechnya Ahmed Dudaev, she allegedly "attacked a police officer and almost deprived him of his eyes."

At the same time, against the backdrop of threats against the whole family of Yangulbaev, the husband of Zarema, the federal judge of retired Sayed, along with her daughter Alia, left Russia.

The Commissioner for Human Rights in Chechnya Mansur Soltaev, who previously escorted Milashin and Nemov from the republic, took part in the Musaeva case. A week after the abduction of a woman, he published a video on his Instagram in which he calls the “special receiver” and learns about the “satisfactory” health of the stolen. Earlier, human rights activists reported that a woman has diabetes and she needs to prick insulin five times a day.

In early June, the state prosecution announced the completion of the investigation against Musaeva and demanded the court to sentenced the woman to the five and a half years of the colony of general regime. Today, the court announced the Musaeva conviction without reducing the requested period even by a month.

“I am very glad that my mother did not stand during this announcement and showed no respect for you, fucking cockses. My mother is a real bear, ”so today's court commented on the son of Zarema Abubakar.

“I'm not worried. Everything is fine and it will be even better. The most important thing is that our conscience is clear, ” said Zarema herself after the announcement of the sentence.