On May 14, mass arrests of suspected members of a terrorist cell began in Kabardino-Balkaria. During a two-day operation in Nalchik and Nartan, security forces detained 48 people. Their relatives claim that during the searches, officers planted SIM cards in the suspects' homes to fabricate charges.
According to the publication "Sapa," citing a law enforcement source, the main suspect in the case is 39-year-old Aslan E. According to investigators, in March 2024, intending to attack law enforcement officers and government facilities, he recruited 15 acquaintances, aged 23 to 57, to join him in this plot. During searches of the suspects' homes, they found sawed-off shotguns, rifles, traumatic pistols, and air pistols, all of which had permits. Ammunition, knives, and religious literature were also confiscated.
Six women—relatives of the detainees—have appealed to the Republic's Human Rights Commissioner, Boris Zumakulov, and the Kabardino-Balkarian Human Rights Center with a complaint about the illegal actions of security forces.

All describe the arrests in the same way: masked men armed with automatic weapons, burst into homes in the dead of night without a warrant or explanation, frightening adults and children, and then planting phones and SIM cards almost openly, then "confiscating" them and taking the men away to an unknown location. According to the Human Rights Center, all the detainees are practicing Muslims.
"Three men in civilian clothes ran into one of the rooms, and one of them leaned over and slipped something behind the door. I personally witnessed it," writes Ganga Makhmudova, the mother of Ansar and Amina Khurum. Ansar was given 10 days for disobeying authorities, while Amin was charged with participating in a terrorist organization (Article 205.5) and is currently in pretrial detention.
“I saw with my own eyes how one of them quickly opened the cabinet under the TV, put something in there, and quickly retreated… And the second one went straight to the cabinet, opened it, and pulled out a phone with a SIM card. I was shocked by their audacity… That phone wasn't ours; we never had one… After searching the house, they started rummaging through the car, found nothing, and stole it without explanation. Brazen lawlessness, no respect for elders, no compassion for four small children,” writes Fatima Zholabova, Zaur Zholabov’s mother.
According to her, her son has a serious illness with upper respiratory tract damage. He was scheduled to be hospitalized on June 30th. Instead, he's in a pretrial detention center, where he's been subjected to physical abuse.
"Masked men ran in, and as it turned out, they were from the FSB. They grabbed my son. They searched him. They turned everything upside down. They took his and his wife's gaming computer and phones. They took their Sberbank cards. And yet, the wife's Sberbank card is used to pay child benefits. They left a nursing mother with two children without a livelihood... Is it really true that just because a person prays to God and is a Muslim, they should accuse him of something he's never been accused of?" writes Yamze Prosvirina, the mother of the detained Eduard Prosvirin. She also reported that two air pistols, for which he has a permit, were confiscated from her son. Rimma Bichekueva, Azamat Bichekuev's mother, said that one of the security officers, who knew she was Balkar, said something in Kabardian before the search, thinking she didn't understand: "Everything is in place, everything is in place, we can begin." Afterward, the officers "discovered" the phone and SIM card they had planted. Rimma also noted that the witnesses "were hired, which was clear from their behavior and answers to my questions."
Timur Bersekov's mother and Artur Tenov's wife also filed complaints.
Despite the scale of the operation, neither the FSB nor the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for Kabardino-Balkaria have commented on the arrests.