The Gudermes City Court of Chechnya found former members of the National Guard Aslan Dukaev and Bekhan Abdurashidov guilty of illegally detaining Alexei Kardashov, a resident of Dagestan. The security forces were sentenced to two years probation under the article on abuse of power, excluding the article on kidnapping from the charge. This was reported by the “Team Against Torture”.

On September 14, 2017, a 43-year-old resident of Khasavyurt, Aleksey Kardashov, was kidnapped on one of the streets of the city. He was lured out of the house with a phone call, hit on the head, pushed into the trunk of a car and taken to Chechnya. Since then, none of his relatives have seen him.

In 2019, four security officials were put on the wanted list in the case: Alikhan Yusupov, head of the Department for Drug Control of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Chechnya, his deputy Kaloga Aziev, as well as Dukaev and Abdurashidov. At the same time, the National Guardsmen were arrested.
Initially, they were suspected not only of abuse of office, but also of kidnapping, but later the investigators refused to qualify the case under the second article.

The basis for the persecution of the National Guard was the testimony of Said-Magomed Omarov, but after the transfer of the case to Chechnya, he suddenly signed a confession. Later, the court sentenced Omarov to 9 years for killing Kardashov and stealing his car.

Lawyers of the Team Against Torture are planning to appeal the sentence handed down to Dukaev and Abdurashidov, considering it mild and unfair.