Journalist Elena Milashina reported that the attack on her in Grozny may be related to her search for a missing security officer

Novaya Gazeta journalist Elena Milashina suggests that the attack on her and lawyer Alexander Nemov in Grozny is connected with their search for former employee of the Republican National Guard Yasin Khalidov. about this She wrote in the article “Chechen Edward Snowden” on the Novaya Gazeta website.

In the spring, Yasin Khalidov tried to leave Russia after he told the opposition Chechen telegram channel 1ADAT information about the methods of work of security forces in the republic. At the end of May, he was detained at the border with Kazakhstan and handed over to the criminal investigation department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Omsk. After this, Khalidov disappeared. Milashina believes that Chechen security forces took him away.

“They attacked me and Alexander Nemov so that we would stop looking for Yasin Khalidov. And as a result, they did everything to ensure that not only journalists and lawyers, but also investigators began searching for him,” the journalist writes in her article.

According to Milashina, she and Nemov could have been attacked by Chechen transport riot police. The journalist reported this to the investigator from Chechnya during interrogation.

On the morning of July 4, Milashina and Nemov were driving from Grozny airport to the sentencing of Zarema Musaeva. Their taxi was blocked by three other cars. People in black balaclavas came out of them, they began to beat the Novaya Gazeta correspondent and the defender with kicks and batons, threatened to kill them, took away and destroyed the equipment.

Doctors in a Moscow hospital recorded a closed craniocerebral injury and broken hands in the journalist, and multiple hematomas, bruises and a stab wound in the leg in the lawyer. from the hospital They were discharged on July 12.

The case of the attack on Milashina and Nemov was opened under six articles of the Criminal Code: illegal imprisonment committed by a group of persons, obstruction of journalistic activity coupled with destruction of property, robbery with the use of weapons, car theft with violence not dangerous to life, threat of murder with causing harm to health, as well as destruction of documents.