CaT rejects Kadyrov's allegations about provoking incident

The pogromists who attacked the office of the Committee against Torture (CaT) and the apartment of the Joint Mobile Group (JMG) in Grozny had pre-planned their actions, said Dmitry Utukin, a CaT activist, and refuted the statement of the head of Chechnya that rights defenders had themselves provoked the incident.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that during a rally held at the office of rights defenders, unidentified attackers crashed their service car, destroyed the office and the apartment of the JMG. Its employees managed to escape; they are now safe, said the activists of the CaT.

As stated by the head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov, employees of the CaT have nothing to do with the human rights work; and they themselves provoked the attack on their office for "getting more US grants."

According to Dmitry Utukin, the course of events suggests that the attack "had been clearly planned in advance," therefore, "no provocation can be spoken about."

According to the members of the JMG of the CaT, "the pre-planned pogrom was carried out by using the crowbars and saws they had brought there beforehand," the "Novye Izvestia" reports.

The attack on the office of the JMG in Grozny was undertaken after the action against the information war against Russia and the Chechen Republic, which had been announced by the authorities.

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