Relatives of woman who escaped from Daghestan accuse human rights activists of kidnapping her

With the help of volunteers, Daghestan-born Zaira Pirova fled her family in September 2024, claiming violence and unwillingness to marry. For four months her parents tried unsuccessfully to find her, but in January 2025 Georgian police, ignoring all risks, informed them where their adult child was located.

On Sunday 6 January, the Russia-based NC SOS crisis group claimed that Georgian law enforcement agencies had relayed the whereabouts of 18-year-old Zaira Pirova, from the village of Druzhba in Daghestan, to her relatives, although they had no such right. In response, the girl recorded a video in which she stated that she ran away from her family of her own free will.

On 7 January, Zaira's father, Nazim Pirov, also recorded a video in response, claiming that representatives of the NC SOS crisis group had kidnapped his daughter and were going to sell her into slavery in Turkey.

OC Media managed to talk to Nazim Pirov and get his version of events. According to him, their family could not be called ‘strict’ — the girls walked with uncovered heads and did not pray, as well as ‘dressed in [whatever] fashion as they wanted’.

Zaira is the second child in the family. After finishing school, her father sent her to study at a medical college in Vladikavkaz, in the neighbouring republic of North Ossetia. Of all the republics in the North Caucasus, North Ossetia is considered the most liberal, primarily because the majority of its population is Orthodox Christian. At the time, Zaira's older sister was already studying in Vladikavkaz. Nazim claims he even bought the girls a flat so they could live together.

‘I told them: ‘I don't want you to get married, because [when] you get married at 17-18 years old, then six months later you are alone with a child in your arms, young people [often] get divorced.’ I said, don't get married, go to school, finish your studies. Then you'll think about it, if you want, you'll get married. I was against them getting married when they had no education to support themselves. That was the purpose of my buying them a flat, paying for their education, ₽200,000 for one ($2,000), ₽150,000 ($1,500) for the other [...]’, Nazim said.

Zaira finished her first course, spent a month and a half at home on holiday, and returned back to Vladikavkaz on 4 September, 2024.

‘On 8 September in the evening we called each other, we talked for about an hour. Everyone was there — both mom and grandmother. We laughed, laughed — she didn't say anything. And the next day in the evening, her sister calls me and says that Zaira did not come home’, Nazim told OC Media.

He claimed that Zaira flew to Moscow that day with a ticket purchased by human rights activists. Volunteers then met her there and took her to St Petersburg. According to Nazim, throughout the process, Zaira was getting a passport so that she could leave Russia. At the end of autumn she left for Armenia and then to Georgia, where her relatives finally found traces of her.

Nazim learnt exactly how Zaira was going to flee after reading her correspondence with a friend. He said that the number was registered to him and he managed to recover the SIM card and the linked Telegram account. The messages with NC SOS volunteers have been deleted, but Zaira had sent screenshots of them to a friend, which he was then able to access.

‘I know from many structures, from law enforcement agencies, she was kidnapped by an organisation that just takes people. [They] take them to Turkey, to Istanbul, for prostitution or for [their] organs. Why, if she has not been kidnapped, if she is not being held, she would publish a video where she walks around the city: here I go here [...] I eat here, like all the girls do in these Instagram [videos]. Not one video, nothing. Just dictated text’, Nazim claimed.

NC SOS has denied all allegations. ‘This is, of course, not true. Zaira left home of her own free will, and left Russia because of numerous attempts to find her’, the organisation’s representatives wrote in their Telegram channel after the publication of Nazim's video message.

Nazim said that their family lived in a large village where everyone knows their family and can confirm that it is ‘not strict’. He added that the family did not want the girls to be married off and no violence was ever used against her. Nazim claimed to have contacted the NC SOS and asked them to connect him with his daughter but his request was refused.

‘Let her tell us to our face what kind of violence there was in the family and who they wanted to marry her off to’, Nazim demanded.

Zaira’s elder sister refused to speak to OC Media, however, she posted a story in her stories saying that Zaira was ‘not forcibly given away by anyone anywhere’.

‘If it was as she says in the video, I would have been sitting married and with two kids long ago [...] She says something about excessive control, but how can you control a teenager who lives alone 500 kilometres from home and does what they want’, her sister wrote on social media.

She is also certain that Zaira was ‘recruited’ and ‘groomed’.

‘She was asked to go to the doctors and give them an opinion on the state of her body. Whether her organs were healthy. My sister, while telling this in correspondence to her friend, even hesitated at this point. Just like my family said, she will either be sold for organs or sold into slavery’, Zaira's sister claimed.

Her sister also added that after Zaira's escape, she saw her father crying for the first time in her life. Nazim himself told OС Media that he and Zaira's grandfather ‘are still holding on like men’, but her mother and grandmother are very worried — ‘the whole house smells of medicine’.

Operating since 2017, the NC SOS crisis group has been helping to remove LGBT people from the North Caucasus to safe places. According to a 2023 report, in total, NC SOS has helped nearly 400 people leave the North Caucasus since its founding. Most of them emigrated from Russia.

LGBT ‘propaganda’ is banned in Russia and LGBT people are often discriminated against and prefer to hide information about their sexual orientation. There are cases in the North Caucasus where LGBT people have been sent to penal colonies based on fabricated evidence of supposed crimes.

In Russia, NC SOS is recognised as a foreign agent and its website is blocked.

Russia investigates disappearance of Chechen woman six months after reported abduction

Russia’s Investigative Committee has launched an investigation into the disappearance and possible murder of Seda Suleymanova, over six months after her reported abduction to Chechnya from Saint Petersburg. The North Caucasus SOS Crisis Group (NC SOS) reported that the Investigative Committee bega…

OC MediaL