Chechen police reportedly torture 19-year-old to death

Viskhan Tazurkaev, a 19-year-old resident of Argun, was reportedly killed as a result of prolonged electrocution after being kidnapped and detained by Chechen law enforcement officers.

‘Having realised that the guy was dead, the officers acted according to the standard FSB [Russia’s Federal Security Service] setup — Viskhan’s corpse was brought to his parents and [they were] ordered to bury him, and to explain his death to all [his] acquaintances as a suicide’, the opposition Telegram channel NIYSO said in a report.

Tazurkaev had been accused of assisting in drug possession. Representatives of NIYSO told OC Media that his colleague, who he worked with at a supermarket warehouse, was also kidnapped for the same alleged crime.

NIYSO's information has been partially confirmed by RFE/RL, which wrote, citing sources, that he was still alive after leaving police custody, and then died later as a result of his torture. Nonetheless, the official version claimed that Tazurkaev had been brought home while still alive, and then was ‘suddenly ill’.

Tazurkaev’s death was only the most recent example of the brutal tactics of the Chechen security apparatus.

On 28 December, according to NIYSO, Tsotsi-Yurt resident Mansur Abdulkadyrov, who was kidnapped several months ago, was tortured to death at the police station. The law enforcement officers who returned Abdulkadyrov’s corpse to his parents were then reportedly ordered to explain that his death had occurred naturally.

According to one version, they had tried to force Abdulkadyrov to sign a contract to be sent to Ukraine, but he did not agree.

Human rights defenders regularly report cases of abductions in Chechnya. In contrast to official detentions, charges are usually not brought during abductions. The abductee is often required either to pay a large sum of money as a ransom or to confess to committing an offence.

The abductions of Chechen residents to be sent to join Russia’s full-scale war became known in May 2022. The abductees were given the choice of signing a contract with the Ministry of Defence or spending indefinite time in ‘secret’ prisons on falsified charges.

In December, an investigation by the Memorial Human Rights Centre has found that a mass wave of unlawful detentions has been sweeping through Chechnya, suggesting that those detained are being forcibly sent to fight in Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine. According to Memorial, this latest wave of mass detentions began after Chechen head Ramzan Kadyrov made statements urging Chechens to ‘go to war’.

It is also not uncommon for relatives of opposition figures to be kidnapped.

Earlier, Kadyrov and his aide and head of the Ministry of National Information, Akhmed Dudayev, repeatedly called information about abductions of relatives of opposition activists and secret torture prisons ‘rumours’.

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OC MediaElizaveta Chukharova