Memorial continues to investigate human rights violations in the North Caucasus.
On September 4, the Memorial Human Rights Center published the latest issue of the bulletin “North Caucasus: a human rights activist’s view.” It examines the events from March 1 to July 15, 2023. The main part of the document is devoted to the Chechen Republic. The final chapters talk about the escalation of the armed conflict in the North Caucasus against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine.
The first section of the bulletin is devoted to the case of Russian National Guard officer Yasin Khalidov, which Novy Dosh wrote about earlier. Khalidov began working in the police as a teenager – he was hired there by colleagues of his father, who died of cancer. Having started his career as a security guard at a checkpoint, Yasin then transferred to the transport police and collaborated with the Center for Combating Extremism. He took part in the “SVO.” After returning from Ukraine, Khalidov decided to quit, but his superiors wouldn't let him go. Then the 19-year-old Rosgvardiya officer turned to Ibragim and Baysangur Yangulbaev, hosts of the opposition channel 1ADAT, with a request to organize his trip abroad. They promised help in exchange for information about the activities of the Center for Extremism, but they deceived him. Having received a huge amount of data from Khalidov about how the Center for Extremism fabricates cases using provocations on social networks, the bloggers did not help him in any way. Moreover, they leaked some of this information and, although they did not name the source, it was not difficult for Khalidov's colleagues to figure it out. In May, he was detained in the Omsk region while trying to cross the Kazakh border, handed over to Chechen security forces and disappeared. In response to accusations from human rights activists and other opposition bloggers that 1ADAT had deceived and set up Khalidov, the Yangulbaevs responded that Khalidov himself was a provocateur and a criminal, and that "if Kadyrov's men kill a Kadyrovite, then he deserves it."
The position of the 1ADAT channel, its conflict with other critics of the Kadyrov regime, and the assassination attempt on Tumso Abdurakhmanov are analyzed in the next section of the Memorial bulletin. We are talking about the staged murder of the most famous anti-Kadyrov blogger Tumso, who lives in Sweden and has indeed been attacked once before. The authors of the bulletin note that the details of this detective story are known only from the words of its hero; no confirmation has been received from the Swedish security forces. The two most popular opposition channels exchanged mutual accusations; both behaved far from impeccably and suffered reputational losses. However, the number of subscribers did not decrease because of this, which indicates a huge demand for independent critical information among Chechen society.
Another chapter of the bulletin is devoted to a detailed analysis of the case of Zarema Musayeva, the mother of the Yangulbayevs, who became a victim of Kadyrov's revenge. The woman received 5.5 years in prison (the appellate court reduced the term to 5 years) on fabricated charges and remains behind bars, despite her deteriorating health and the public resonance that her case has received throughout the world.
Another link in these events, directly related to the trial of Zarema Musayeva and, possibly, to the case of Yasin Khalidov, is the brutal attack on Novaya Gazeta journalist Elena Milashina and lawyer Alexander Nemov. According to Memorial, this incident cannot be called unexpected - it was a logical consequence of regional and federal policies towards human rights activists.
