Playwright Mikhail Zhilkin claims receiving threats after escaping from Chechnya

The chairman of the board for the Human Rights Centre (HRC) "Memorial" has urged the law enforcement agencies to check a playwright Mikhail Zhilkin's message about receiving threats from Chechnya after a Chechen official held Mikhail Zhilkin in Grozny for four years.

According to Mikhail Zhilkin, after he lost his property in the city of Naro-Fominsk in the Moscow Region because of the machinations carried out by "black realtors," Ibragim, one of his "Chechen friends" proposed him to move to Grozny and promised to unofficially solve the problem with the lost half of the house.

"Upon my arrival in Grozny, Ibragim took away my documents and my bank card... Ibragim told me that his conditions for me are much better: he would give me money for a living wage from the amounts I earned and he would not restrict my freedom of movement, since it was unreal to escape from Grozny. And I lived that way for four years," Mikhail Zhilkin wrote on his Facebook page on August 1.

According to him, in recent months, Ibragim began to take away all the money he earned together with his disability pension.

The playwright has noted that after Ibragim beat him, he was evacuated from Chechnya to Moscow thanks to the HRC "Memorial". However, he began to receive threats from Chechnya.

According to Alexander Cherkasov, the chairman of the board for the HRC "Memorial", playwright Mikhail Zhilkin called him in winter of 2017 with a request for help immediately after he had been beaten.

Alexander Cherkasov believes that the threats voiced against Mikhail Zhilkin should not be left without attention of the law enforcement agencies, the edition reports.

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