Muslim Murdiyev, a 14-year-old Chechen resident of Moscow, was sentenced to one year and 11 months in prison for hooliganism. The prosecution insisted on a two-year sentence, while the defense intends to appeal the verdict.
According to investigators, five teenagers, including Murdiyev, beat eight people in September 2023 near Moscow's Aviapark shopping center and Khodynskoye Pole Park. Law enforcement believes the students intentionally provoked verbal conflicts with random passersby, after which they attacked them.
Chechnya's Human Rights Commissioner, Mansur Soltayev, emphasized that Muslim Murdiyev only intervened in one fight. According to the ombudsman, he "defended a 12-year-old child from being beaten." Soltayev requested a non-custodial sentence for the defendant.
Previously, Moscow law enforcement agencies had denied Murdiyev's mother's requests and petitions more than 700 times. She requested a fair investigation in a complaint addressed to the Chairman of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin. According to her, the investigation failed to provide her with CCTV footage of her son. She also stated that he was threatened with a knife during the fight.
As a reminder, last year, during a live broadcast in Grozny, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov criticized the heads of the Investigative Committee and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Alexander Bastrykin and Vladimir Kolokoltsev, over the criminal case against Murdiyev and demanded his release.
Commenting on today's ruling by the Savelovsky Court in Moscow, a Moscow lawyer of Chechen origin, who wished to remain anonymous, suggested that three factors predetermined the verdict. First, the complete dependence of Russian courts on the security forces has long been a reality, with judges simply transferring indictments from the Investigative Committee and the Prosecutor's Office from a flash drive, without even bothering to rewrite them, and renaming them verdicts. The overall acquittal rate nationwide is less than one percent, the lawyer recalls, citing a trend over the past 15 years.
Second, he notes, Caucasians in Russia, particularly Chechens, have been sentenced to the harshest punishments since the early 2000s.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, in the Murdiyev case is the clash between high-ranking Moscow security officials and the head of Chechnya. Following Ramzan Kadyrov's harsh statements in December 2024 against Bastrykin and Kolokoltsev, saying they were "in the wrong place" and that Murdiyev "won't be jailed, nothing will be done to him," our source is certain that it has clearly become a "matter of honor" for the latter to imprison the young man.
