The Chechen Supreme Court has overturned the sentence of political prisoner Zarema Musaeva and sent the criminal case back for retrial in a court. During the new proceedings, Musaeva will remain in detention at a pre-trial detention centre, the human rights organisation Crew Against Torture (Komanda protiv pytok) reported on Monday.
According to the human rights group, the prosecutor participating in the proceedings stated that the court, when issuing the previous sentence, ‘did not address a single argument of the defence’, including the claim regarding the ‘absence of motive for the crime — no hostile relations between Musaeva and the victim’. In the prosecutor’s view, this ‘demonstrates a lack of adversarial principle and a formalistic approach by the court’.
The Crew Against Torture noted that this is the first instance in all of Musaeva’s legal proceedings where the prosecutor disagreed with the court’s conclusions.
Musaeva was originally sentenced in August to three years and 11 months in a settlement-type penal colony on charges of disrupting the operation of a correctional facility. According to the investigation, the sentence was allegedly connected to an attack by Musaeva on a Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) officer during a trip to a hospital, where she was receiving treatment for insulin-dependent diabetes.
Elizaveta Chukharova
This is the second criminal case against Musaeva, and was initiated in spring of last year, shortly before the end of the term of the first sentence and soon after one of her sons made critical statements against Chechen Head Ramzan Kadyrov.
Zarema Musaeva is the mother of opposition activists Abubakar, Ibragim, and Baysangur Yangulbaev, who criticise Kadyrov’s policies, and the wife of retired Chechen Supreme Court judge Saydi Yangulbaev. According to human rights defenders, Musaeva has effectively become a hostage due to her sons’ activities abroad.
In December 2025, Kadyrov openly stated that she had been ‘taken’ to Chechnya because the whole family ‘worked on social media’. The organisation Memorial has recognised Musaeva to be a political prisoner.
Elizaveta Chukharova
In January 2022, Chechen security forces abducted Zarema Musaeva from her apartment in Nizhny Novgorod. In Grozny, she was initially given 15 days of administrative arrest under the article on insulting a police officer, and then a criminal case was opened, alleging that she attacked a district officer who was drawing up a protocol. Later, a charge of fraud was added against her.
Following Musaeva’s abduction, Chechen Head Ramzan Kadyrov threatened the Yangulbaev family with reprisals and later repeated the threats in a video address. High-ranking Chechen officials also joined the threats, and a rally was held in central Grozny against the Yangulbaev family, during which their portraits were burned and trampled.
In July 2023, Musaeva was sentenced to five and a half years in a general-regime penal colony. The term was later reduced by six months, and the regime of detention was changed to a settlement-type penal colony. She was denied parole twice.
In May 2025, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) 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.
