11:23, 24 July 2019

Rights defenders voice out new facts on torture and extrajudicial executions in Chechnya

The Human Rights Centre (HRC) "Memorial", the Committee against Torture (CaT) and the "Novaya Gazeta" have presented testimonies of witnesses of detentions and disappearances in the period from December 2016 to January 2017 of residents of Chechnya from the so-called "execution list".

On July 9, 2017, the "Novaya Gazeta" wrote that in Chechnya, on January 26, 2017, the persons detained after the attack on policemen in Grozny on December 17, 2016, were executed.

In July 2019, a trial of the case of 14 people was over in Chechnya. They told how they had been tortured in secret prisons, including with electric shocks, and how accusation against them were falsified.

Elena Milashina, a special correspondent of the "Novaya Gazeta", said that the figurants of the "case of 14" and their relatives decided to testify about what happened, after the defendants were sentenced to almost 10 years in a high security colony.

The case involved 14 residents of the Kurchaloi District; they were sentenced for participating in illegal armed formations (IAFs), possessing explosives and weapons.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on July 23, 2019 at 07:30 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.

Author: Gor Alexanyan

Source: CK correspondent