Ingushetia demands to interrogate Yunus-Bek Evkurov

On May 15, a request was submitted to the Investigating Department for the Republic of Ingushetia of the Investigating Committee of the Russian Federation (ICRF) to invite for questioning Ingush leader Yunus-Bek Evkurov in the case of an attack on journalists and human rights defenders at the border of Chechnya and Ingushetia in March 2016. This was reported by Andrei Sabinin, a lawyer of the international human rights group "Agora".

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on March 9, 2016, in Ingushetia not far from the border with Chechnya, a group of unidentified people beat eight human rights defenders, journalists, and a driver of the minibus of the Joint Mobile Group (JMG) of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture. According to one of the victims, the attackers arrived in cars with Chechen state registration numbers and spoke in Russian with an accent.

According to the request submitted to the ICRF's Department for Ingushetia, at a meeting with the members of the Human Rights Council (HRC), the leader of the republic "demonstrated awareness of the attackers' names."

The conclusions on the Ingush leader's awareness about the criminals' names were made on the basis of his statements. In June 2016, at a meeting of the Human Rights Council, Yunus-Bek Evkurov stated: "I can at once tell you that [the attackers] are not natives of Chechnya. If you have a firm belief that they were law enforcers who came from Chechnya, then I can say that those people were not natives of Chechnya. You can even have no doubts about that," said Yunus-Bek Evkurov as quoted by the "Radio Liberty".

At the request sent to the ICRF's Department for Ingushetia, advocate Andrei Sabinin noted that the testimony of the Ingush leader could contribute to investigation into the case of the attack on journalists and human rights defenders at the border of Chechnya and Ingushetia in March 2016.

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