The Shali City Court of Chechnya has sentenced Zarema Musaeva, the mother of opposition activists Baisangur, Ibragim, and Abubakar Yangulbaev, to almost four years for allegedly attacking a penitentiary officer.
The court sentenced Musaeva on charges of ‘disrupting the operation of a correctional facility’ on Wednesday.
According to the prosecution, Musaeva allegedly attacked an officer of the Federal Penitentiary Service and scratched his neck in December 2024. According to the human rights activists from the Crew Against Torture, there were no witnesses to the alleged attack.
The prosecution requested that Musaeva be sentenced to four years in a penal settlement, but the court stopped short of that, sentencing her to three years and 11 months instead.
It is not yet specified where Musaeva will serve her new sentence. In her final statement in court, she asked not to be sent to the same colony where the FSIN officer who accused her of assault works. She also stated that she would not appeal the verdict, as she ‘does not believe in the fairness of the court’.
The charges against Musaeva for attacking a penitentiary officer in December were pressed a few months before the end of five years and a half long sentence she had received for allegedly assaulting a police officer in Grozny following her arrest in 2022.
https://oc-media.org/russian-authorities-charge-yangulbaevs-detained-mother-with-assaulting-prison-guard/
Musaeva was arrested in Nizhny Novgorod January of that year during a police raid of her family home in the city. The police reportedly intended to arrest her husband, Saidi Yangulbaev, who is a retired Chechen Supreme Court judge, but were unable to due to his judicial immunity. Musaeva was abducted from her home without an official warrant as a witness in an unidentified fraud case.
Immediately after being transferred to Grozny, she was sentenced to 15 days of arrest under an administrative article, and was then criminally charged with attacking a district police officer who was drawing up a report against her.
Musaeva was convicted in July 2023, with the sentence being commuted by six months. She was twice denied parole.
Later, she was additionally charged with fraud, for allegedly failing to return parts of a fund she had received as compensation for caring for a sick person.
The day after Musaeva’s detention, Chechen Head Ramzan Kadyrov published a video message in which he accused the Yangulbaev family of extremism and threatened to ‘destroy’ them. He later repeated the threats in another video message. Senior Chechen security officials and government representatives joined in on the threats, and a rally against the Yangulbaev family was held in central Grozny, in which their portraits were burned, trampled on, and torn apart.
Human rights organisations view the events as continued pressure on the Yangulbaev family and as politically motivated persecution. According to lawyers, in none of the cases against Musaeva did the court accept any evidence from the defence. Abubakar Yangulbaev has also told OC Media that his mother was innocent and that Kadyrov’s regime was using her as an example to frighten dissidents.
In May, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in favour of Musaeva and ordered Russia to pay her €52,000 ($55,000) in compensation for her arrest.
Russia has refused to honour the court’s ruling.
Elizaveta Chukharova
