Chegem, Kabardino-Balkaria. (Photograph: Chereck/Wikimedia Commons)
Two people have been killed by the security forces in a ‘counterterrorism operation’ in the Russian Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria. The two men, who the authorities said were members of the ‘radical Islamist underground’, were killed just 10 kilometres from the republic’s capital, Nalchik. [Read more…]
The Grotniki refugee centre (Marcin Stępień /Agencja Gazeta)
Mass executions, murders, abductions, rape, torture, intimidation, extortion, forged criminal proceedings, monstrous corruption — this is what Ramzan Kadyrov’s Chechnya looks like today. The Russian republic is completely disconnected from the Russian legal system — with the consent of the Russian authorities.
Buynaksk (Russiantowns.livejournal.com)
Four teenagers detained in Daghestan on terror charges have accused the authorities of forcing them to swear allegiance to the Islamic State at gunpoint. [Read more…]
(National Antiterrorism Committee)
On 2 April, the driver of a car in the Russian Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria opened fire on police officers, before fleeing the scene. No injuries were reported. [Read more…]
The family of Temirlan Machalikashvili and their supporters gathered on 26 December demanding a parliamentary investigatory commission be set up. (Dato Parulava/OC Media)
The Family of Temirlan Machalikashvili, who was shot dead by Georgian security forces last December, have held a silent rally in front of Tbilisi’s parliament building demanding parliament look into the teenager’s death. [Read more…]
A sign in Grozny reading ‘Let the justice triumph’ (Dominik K. Cagara /OC Media)
Many families in Chechnya tell of young male relatives who have either disappeared without trace or are being held in detention, suggesting such cases are not rare.
Abutalib Shakhruyev (OC Media)
A man from the Russian Republic of Daghestan has appealed to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) over torture he says he was subjected to at Daghestan’s Centre for Countering Extremism. Abutalib Shakhruyev was sentenced to 11 years in prison in March for ‘aiding and financing members of illegal armed formations’. [Read more…]
Buynaksk (Russiantowns.livejournal.com)
Police in the Russian Republic of Daghestan have detained four teenagers on weapons charges near the town of Buynaksk. Parents of the detainees say the authorities intend to frame the boys for a fabricated terror plot. [Read more…]
Relatives of the sentenced men watching armoured vehicles leave the building of the Supreme Court of Chechnya in Grozny on 12 September (/YouTube)
On 12 September, a court in the Russian Republic of Chechnya convicted 14 men of ‘participation in an illegal armed formation’ and ‘illegal purchase and possession of weapons’. The trial was held in secret, with relatives claiming they were promised the men would receive lighter sentences if they did not contact rights groups or the media.
Screenshot from a video from a counterterrorism operation in Botlikh, Daghestan, in March 2018 (Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation /YouTube)
For several years, young Daghestani men have been disappearing, reported missing by their families only later to be declared ‘destroyed in counterterrorism operations’. Evidence from the families of many of these men as well as local rights groups and experts, suggest they may have been kidnapped by the authorities, and that faking the war on terror is just another face of Daghestan’s raging corruption.
