The Deputy Chair of Chechnya’s government, Akhmed Dudaev, has published a video featuring Belkisa Mintsaeva, a Chechen resident who disappeared a month and a half ago after being detained by security forces. The recording was released after the Prosecutor’s Office launched a review following an appeal by human rights activists concerning Mintsaeva’s possible unlawful arrest.
Mintsaeva’s whereabouts had been unknown since mid-April. According to human rights activists and people close to her, she had travelled to Chechnya in an attempt to regain custody of her children, who were living with her former husband, after which she was detained by security forces.
Elizaveta Chukharova
In the published video released on Thursday, which appears to have been recorded by Mintsaeva herself, she says that ‘everything is fine’ and asks people ‘not to turn her into a media story’.
‘I want to address Telegram channels, [Ksenia] Sobchak [the Russian journalist who wrote about Mintsaeva], and various other people who write about us and mention me and my children — we are all fine. I am alive and healthy, and so are my children. A big request is to not turn us into a media story and not to write about us everywhere. Thank you for your understanding’, Mintsaeva says in the video.
It remains unclear where exactly the recording was made and under what circumstances it was filmed. Dudaev did not say whether Mintsaeva had been released or whether she is able to maintain contact with relatives and lawyers.
‘This video is a response to all the clowns pretending to be journalists and human rights activists, while in reality engaging in grant-eating and cheap hype’, Dudaev wrote in the caption accompanying the video.
Following an appeal by MP Ksenia Goryacheva of the New People party, the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office instructed the Chechen Prosecutor’s Office to conduct a review into the circumstances of Mintsaeva’s detention.
The project Kavkaz bez Materi (‘Caucasus Without a Mother’) published screenshots of official responses to a parliamentary appeal addressed to Russian Prosecutor General Aleksandr Gutsan. On 8 May, First Deputy Prosecutor General Anatoly Razinkin stated that Chechnya’s Prosecutor General had been instructed to verify information regarding the fate of Mintsaeva and her underage children and to inform Razinkin of the results.
On 12 May, Chechen Deputy Prosecutor Аleksei Anishchenko informed Goryacheva that the appeal had been accepted for consideration. No further responses to the submitted appeals have been received, according to Kavkaz bez Materi.
No information has also been published regarding Mintsaeva’s procedural status, the existence of a criminal case, or any official charges against her.
Mintsaeva had previously stated publicly that her former husband was preventing her from seeing her children. According to human rights activists, she had been living outside Chechnya and feared returning to the republic because of possible pressure from relatives and security forces.
Cases involving women disappearing after returning to Chechnya or other North Caucasus republics have repeatedly drawn the attention of human rights organisations. One of the most widely known cases is that of Seda Suleymanova, who was forcibly taken from Saint Petersburg to Chechnya by her relatives. After activists demanded proof that she was alive, the Chechen authorities published a video featuring her. She disappeared afterwards, and human rights activists believe she may have been killed.
