Translated material
"This is for Mansur." Kidnapping of the family of a fugitive native of Chechnya
The brother of Mansur Movlaev, a native of Chechnya who remains in a migration prison in Kazakhstan, was hospitalized with serious injuries - presumably after being tortured at the police department. When this became known, Kadyrov’s men kidnapped Movlaev’s parents, his support group said. Human rights activists are confident that in this way they are trying to persuade a native of Chechnya who fled from the republic to return: the Russian authorities are seeking his extradition from Kazakhstan, and two authorities have already denied him refugee status.
Mansur Movlaev is a master of sports in taekwondo from the village of Starye Atagi. In August 2022, according to the Chechen opposition movement NIYSO, he was kidnapped by employees of the Shali district police department of Chechnya and held in one of the secret prisons. Movlaev managed to escape and enter Kyrgyzstan illegally, without documents.
In October 2023, a court in Bishkek sentenced Movlaev to six months in prison followed by deportation from the country under the article of illegally crossing the border of Kyrgyzstan. On November 20 of the same year, Movlaev's term expired and he left the country to avoid deportation to Russia.
In mid-May, Movlaev was detained in Almaty at the request of Russia, where he was put on the federal wanted list in connection with a case of extremism initiated in Chechnya. Movlaev was arrested and he officially applied for asylum, but at the end of 2025, the Kazakh authorities denied him refugee status, and in January, the Prosecutor General's Office of the Republic granted the Russian request for extradition. The court refused to overturn this decision.
“On May 26, an appeal was held to appeal the court’s decision to deny refugee status. The court’s decision was left unchanged. The appeal was completed in an unprecedentedly short time. We will send a cassation appeal at the beginning of the week. And we will wait for the cassation hearing. When the cassation hearing will take place, I don’t know yet, maybe it will also be expedited,” Movlaeva’s lawyer Elena Zhigalenok told the editors.
Return by any means
Security forces in Chechnya are putting pressure on Movlaev’s relatives to achieve his return to the republic - regardless of the decisions of the Kazakh courts. Last October, Mansur recorded an appeal in which he announced the kidnapping of his brothers Zelimkhan and Khamzat in Chechnya. According to him, they were taken to the Urus-Martan district police department and tortured there in order to put pressure on their fleeing relative.
On June 2 of this year, Mansur Movlaev’s support group on Instagram reported that Zelimkhan Movlaev was hospitalized with severe injuries to the rectum. The only reason for what happened was the police’s attempt to put pressure on Mansur Movlaev, who was arrested in Kazakhstan, activists said .
They told the editors of Kavkaz.Realiya that Mansur’s family was previously afraid to talk about the kidnappings, which began not in 2025, but in 2022.
“After Mansur’s escape from the Shali district police department in 2022, the entire family was abducted. A day later, everyone was released, except Zelimkhan: he was held for almost half a year. Mansur’s family was afraid to talk about it. Recently, Zelimkhan was kidnapped again, brutally tortured, they told him: “This is for you for Mansur,” said the support group.
Mansur Movlaev, through a lawyer, told Kavkaz.Realiya that he could not disclose the source of information about the kidnapping of his relatives, but did not doubt its reliability: “The information came from our village, from the hospital where he was taken, and directly from the Shalinsky police department, where my brother was tortured by an operative named Ramzan. This operative tortured me with electric shock, too, in 2022,” he clarified.
On the evening of June 5, Mansur’s support group announced the kidnapping of his parents Khava and Movsar Movlaev: “Even Zelimkhan or Khamzat don’t know where they were taken. They said if Mansur doesn’t come, the parents won’t return home either,” the editors of Kavkaz.Realii reported.
"Why do we need criminals in Kazakhstan?"
In Chechnya, Movlaev is in danger, but officials in Kazakhstan take Russia’s accusations against him very seriously, noted the representative of Ichkeria in Austria, Roza Dunaeva, in an interview with the editors of Kavkaz.Realii.
“I recently participated in a forum in Kazakhstan dedicated to the issue of nuclear deterrence - I also talked on the sidelines about the Mansur case. In response to my arguments, I heard: “Why do we need criminals here in Kazakhstan? Who are you protecting!” I think that the official position now sounds something like this,” Dunaeva said.
Both Mansur himself and his brother Zelimkhan have previous criminal records in Russia. In 2020, Mansur Movlaev was convicted in a drug trafficking case; Chechen opposition activists claimed that he had framed him. In 2022, he was released on parole and was kidnapped in August. 1Adat noted that Mansur is the only known escapee from an illegal prison in Chechnya. According to activists, the second criminal case was fabricated using a cryptocurrency transfer from Movlaev’s phone to the movement’s wallet: the Supreme Court of Chechnya declared it extremist back in 2022.
Russia continues to commit crimes against humanity in Chechnya
In 2019, Zelimkhan Movlaev was sentenced to three years of strict regime under the article of attempting to participate in an illegal armed group. According to Kavkaz.Realii, he served time in colony No. 5 in the Nizhny Novgorod region. The details of the charges against him and the term are known only because Islam Suleymanov, who was convicted along with him, filed an appeal to the Supreme Court of Chechnya.
It follows from the appeal ruling that the essence of the charges was allegedly an attempt by Movlaev and Suleymanov to go to war in Syria from Turkey. Suleymanov’s defense argued that he did not take any action to join an illegal armed formation, including within two years after returning to Chechnya, and at the same time asked to take into account his admission of guilt for consideration of the case in a special manner. Movlaev refused to participate in the appeal.
“The last criminal case against Zelimkhan was drawn up because of his refusal to go to work in the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Chechnya,” Mansur Movlaev reported to the editors. “He did not refuse directly, but chose to go to work in agriculture so as not to have any connections with Kadyrov’s men, for which he was kidnapped and forced to take the blame under torture. The torture was so serious that he then suffered either a stroke or a heart attack, I don’t remember exactly now. But his condition was close to critical. The court sentenced him to three years, and they made it clear to him that if he filed an appeal, they would charge him with a couple more articles. That is, they did not even allow him to file an appeal. They threatened him with repeated torture and a new fabrication of the criminal case.”
In February, the UN Human Rights Committee prohibited Kazakhstan from extraditing Mansur Movlaev, a native of Chechnya, to Russia. After this decision, the court in Almaty again denied him refugee status.
These decisions indicate “not just a formal judicial refusal to protect rights,” but also that “the norms of international law ratified by Kazakhstan have been ignored,” says Murat Adam, a lawyer and member of the Kazakhstan NGO Coalition against Torture. The only way out now is cassation, which can overturn the decision of the local court, he believes.
Despite the ban on the extradition of Chechen activist Mansur Movlaev to Russia by the UN Human Rights Committee, the threat of his extradition still exists, especially since, according to the draft of the new Constitution of Kazakhstan, national legislation will take precedence over international treaties, said Fatima Suleymanova, an official representative of the Chechen United Force movement.
“I am now working to find out the possibility of obtaining a humanitarian visa for Mansur to France, since the Russian occupation regime in Chechnya deprived him of his documents. Unfortunately, in Europe, they have long believed that Russia’s wars in Chechnya are a thing of the past. In this regard, it is very difficult for Chechen refugees to obtain international protection here. However, Mansur’s case clearly illustrates that these wars never ended, but only turned into a form of occupation, under which Russia continues commit crimes against humanity in Chechnya,” she notes.
- The threat of deportation due to an old photograph of an acquaintance who later joined an extremist group, the need to prove in courts that a resident of Chechnya cannot avoid mobilization for war, and regular checks are just some of the problems that Chechen refugees face in Europe. The Kavkaz.Realii website discussed why such cases are repeated in different countries with human rights activists.
- Amnesty International called on EU countries not to extradite refugees from the North Caucasus to Russia. At home, they face torture, abuse, or being sent to war against Ukraine, human rights activists said.