Lawyers of JMG in Chechnya ask power agents to check incidents around their office

The lawyers of the Joint Mobile Group (JMG) of rights defenders, working in Chechnya, have appealed to law enforcement bodies asking them to conduct a check the fact of visit to their office of three men and the subsequent fire in the premises, as well as the fact of persecuting them by men in masks on December 13. Rights defenders believe that all these events are not occasional.

On December 15, rights defenders addressed the Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) and the Chechen MIA, as well as the Investigating Committee and the Prosecutor's Office of Chechnya demanding to conduct checks on these facts, as well as the above visit of three men to the office. This visit, as reported by Sergey Babinets, the senior lawyer of the JMG, in the video posted by the "Novaya Gazeta", took place a few hours before the fire; and an object resembling a pistol was in the hand of one of them.

Sergey Babinets and Dmitry Dimitrov told about policemen's illegal actions, who kept them for several hours on December 14 in their rented apartment and confiscated all their equipment.

After the incident with the staff of the JMG, rights defenders stated that they would continue working in Chechnya; however, they consider a transfer of their Chechen office to another region – to Dagestan or Stavropol Territory.

Earlier, law enforcement bodies of Chechnya refuted the allegations about the pressure on the Committee against Torture.

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