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RIGA, Latvia — A prominent Russian investigative journalist and a human rights lawyer were brutally beaten as they made their way to a court in Russia’s Chechen Republic to attend the high-profile trial of Zarema Musayeva, the mother of exiled opposition activists who accused the Chechen warlord Ramzan challenged Kadyrov.
Journalist Yelena Milashina has for years covered Chechnya, the Caucasus region where Russia has fought two wars and is now tightly controlled by Kadyrov, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Milashina investigated human rights violations, including the torture and killing of gay men, the persecution of dissidents, and the killing of fellow reporters.
Milashina was on her way to court from the airport in Grozny, the Chechen capital, along with Musayeva’s lawyer Alexander Nemov, when another vehicle blocked their car early Tuesday. A group of masked men brutally beat her, destroyed her equipment and threatened to shoot her, human rights groups and Milashina’s employer, Novaya Gazeta, said.
“Milashina’s fingers were broken and she sometimes loses consciousness. She has bruises all over her body,” said the Memorial Human Rights Center. “When they were beaten, they were told, ‘You have been warned.’ Get out of here and don’t write anything.’”
In a photo posted by another activist, Sergei Babinets, Milashina could be seen with her hair shaved off at irregular intervals, her hands and one arm heavily bandaged, and her face and scalp covered in a green substance that is normally used serves as an antiseptic but is harmful when it comes in contact with the eyes. A picture of Nemov’s injured leg showed bruising and what appeared to be a knife wound. The state news agency Tass reported that the two would likely be evacuated to Moscow on Tuesday evening due to the severity of their injuries.
“It was a classic kidnapping as it used to be,” Milashina told Chechen human rights commissioner Mansur Soltaev while lying on a stretcher, according to a video published by Novaya Gazeta. “That just hasn’t happened in a long time. They threw the cab driver out of his car, got in, bowed our heads, tied my hands, got us on our knees and put guns to our heads. Somehow they made everything nervous; they didn’t even manage to tie [our] hands right.”
Musayeva, whose trial Milashina was supposed to report on, is the mother of opposition activists Abubakar and Ibragim Yangulbaev. Musayeva is also the wife of former federal judge Saidi Yangulbaev. Chechen authorities have accused the sons of engaging in “extremist activities” over alleged ties to Telegram channel 1ADAT, which is highly critical of Kadyrov. Russian authorities banned 1ADAT after classifying it as an extremist organization.
In early 2022, just before the invasion of Ukraine, Chechen police raided Musayeva’s apartment in Nizhny Novgorod, a town about 250 miles east of Moscow, and forcibly took her to the Chechen capital, Grozny, for questioning. Her family called it a kidnapping.
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Threats against family members are a tactic often used by Chechen law enforcement agencies to pressure Kadyrov’s detractors and critics. Musayeva’s imprisonment made headlines, but Kadyrov escalated his public threats against the family.
“This family is waiting for a place either in prison or underground,” Kadyrov wrote on his Telegram blog at the time. “And it’s not up to me anymore. I know the mood in society. As long as at least one Chechen is alive, the members of this family can no longer enjoy life freely; The honor of every single representative of our people is deeply injured.” He added: “Always remember, Yangulbaevs.”
Kadyrov’s close confidante Adam Delimkhanov went a step further and threatened to “rip off heads… for blood feuds” in a live stream on Instagram.
The Yangulbaevs then fled the country. According to Kadyrov, on January 21, Musayeva was taken to Grozny, where she allegedly “attacked a police officer and almost took his eye off,” and later criminal charges were filed against her. According to Babinets, a lawyer and activist with the Russian organization Crew Against Torture, formerly Committee Against Torture, Musayeva lost consciousness after her arrest.
At the time, Kadyrov also described Milashina as “a terrorist making money on the Chechnya issue by dreaming up scenarios and whispering words and behaviors into her characters’ ears” and urged law enforcement to arrest her.
Musayeva spent almost a year and a half in a detention center. Her defense team has repeatedly called for her to be placed under house arrest because of her poor health. She is in her late 50s, has diabetes and needs insulin shots.
In January, Abubakar Yangulbaev begged Kadyrov to release his mother and take him in her place.
“My mother’s health is deteriorating, it is difficult for her to be in captivity and she should not be there and should not be responsible for her sons’ actions,” he said in a video address. “And when the laws in Russia and Chechnya don’t work, there are only rules of war, so let’s trade them for me.”
Musayeva was sentenced to 5½ years in prison on Tuesday. Nemov, her attorney, was unable to attend the hearing due to his injuries. The court refused to postpone the hearing, Russia’s Mediazona news agency reported.
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The Kremlin said Putin had been informed of the attack and the incident was being reviewed by Russian Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova.
“She has appealed to the Investigative Committee and the Republic Prosecutor’s Office,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. “Law enforcement will need to assess this, but of course we’re talking about a very serious attack that requires active action.”
Chechen Ombudsman Soltaev partially described the attack as a “distraction”.
“It was a daring, subversive provocation against the Republic. I think the internal affairs authorities will find out; “We will monitor the situation,” Soltaev told state news agency RIA Novosti.
“An attack on a journalist and a lawyer in Chechnya requires a tough response from law enforcement agencies,” said senior Russian lawmaker Andrei Klishas.
In response to Tuesday night’s attack, Kadyrov said on Telegram that he had “ordered the relevant authorities to make every effort to identify the attackers.”
“We’ll find out,” he said.
This is at least the third known attack on Milashina. In 2006 she was attacked in Beslan, the capital of the Russian Republic of North Ossetia-Alania, and in 2021 she was beaten in Balashikha, a city in the Moscow region. After Kadyrov’s threatening remarks last year, she temporarily left Russia.
In three decades, six journalists were killed for Novaya Gazeta, which established itself as the publication of choice for Russia’s liberal intelligentsia during the heyday of independent journalism in the 1990s. Among them was Anna Politkovskaya, who reported on the wars in Chechnya. In 2014, eight years after her death, a Russian court sent the assassins to prison, but it’s still unclear who ordered or paid for the murder.
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Novaya suspended publication after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 because laws Russia passed late last year essentially banned critical reporting.
Novaya Gazeta editor Dmitry Muratov has been jointly awarded the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize with Filipino journalist Maria Ressa. Milashina received an International Women of Courage Award presented by First Lady Michelle Obama and Secretary of State John F. Kerry in 2013. Reporters Without Borders, an international advocacy group for journalists, said Tuesday it was “appalled by the gruesome attack.” in Grozny.
Memorial, the human rights organization, said the attack, as well as previous public threats against reporters and activists in the region, showed the “complete impunity of the Chechen Republic authorities”.
“There is no doubt that the attack on Milashina and Nemov was perpetrated by agents of the authorities to ban them from attending the trial and, more generally, to intimidate journalists, lawyers and human rights groups,” Memorial said in a Telegram post.
The International Memorial Society, known as Memorial, and Russia’s foremost human rights organization, was dissolved by Russia’s Supreme Court in late 2021.
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