In Budyonnovsk, head of Committee of Soldiers' Mothers detained after search in NGO's office

On October 17, the law enforcement bodies conducted a search in the office of the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers "Mothers from Kuma River Area" in Budyonnovsk and the Budyonnovsk District of the Stavropol Territory. Lyudmila Bogatenkova, the 73-year-old head of the NGO, is detained for charge of fraud, the website of the project "RealArmy" reports.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on August 25, Sergey Krivenko and Ella Polyakova, members of the Presidential Council for Civil Society Institutions and Human Rights (HRC), appealed to the Investigating Committee of the Russian Federation (ICRF) with a request to check the information that nine contract soldiers of the 18^th Motorized Rifle Brigade perished in the vicinities of the military training ground in the Rostov Region. On August 27, Lyudmila Bogatenkova, the head of the Committee "Mothers from Kuma River Area", stated that the contract soldiers declared dead in the Rostov Region fought in Ukraine.

The human rights defenders treat the Lyudmila Bogatenkova's detention and her placement in SIZO (pre-trial prison) as an act of intimidation in connection with her activities. "For many years, Lyudmila Bogatenkova actively protects soldiers and reveals the facts of inhuman treatment and torture of conscripts. Recent months, she has been investigating the circumstances of the deaths of Russian soldiers in July-August 2014," reports the message posted on October 17 on the website of the public human rights organization "Soldiers' Mothers of Saint Petersburg".

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.