"Memorial": native of Chechnya disappears on Azerbaijani-Russian border

On May 20, Muslim Bibulatov, a native of the Chechen city of Argun, disappeared under unclear circumstances on the Azerbaijani-Russian border, the Human Rights Centre (HRC) "Memorial" reports.

Since 2005, Muslim Bibulatov, born in 1952, lived with his family in Azerbaijan. On May 20, 2013 he drove to Chechnya. At about midday, at the customs post in the city of Derbent of the Republic of Dagestan, he and his companions safely passed the Azerbaijani section of the border.

On the Russian side his companions passed the check and waited for Bibulatov; however, he never showed up. The worried companions turned to border guards, but they said that they knew nothing.

When his fellow passengers called Bibulatov's relatives in Baku, it turned out that he was not there either.

Bibulatov's relatives fear that Muslim was taken out of Derbent by Chechen power agents, allegedly of the Shali ROVD (District Interior Division) and handed over to the security service of the republic's leader.

According to his relatives, from the 1990s, Bibulatov was an ideological supporter of independence of Chechnya; he was closely acquainted with the former president of the self-proclaimed Ichkeria Abdul-Khalim Sadulaev. Fearing persecution, in 2005, Bibulatov left for Azerbaijan, where he "was registered as a UN refugee," says the today's message of the HRC "Memorial".