Residents of Chechnya pretend to be persons from "execution list"

According to materials found by the newspaper "Novaya Gazeta", two residents of Chechnya, who looked like their brothers included in the "execution list," misled the Russia's Ombudsperson.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on July 9, 2017, the "Novaya Gazeta" reported that in Chechnya, people, detained after an attack on policemen in Grozny on December 17, 2016, were executed at night on January 26, 2017.

On May 17, 2017, the Chief Investigating Department for the North-Caucasian Federal District (NCFD) of the Investigating Committee of the Russian Federation (ICRF) issued a resolution with a refusal to institute criminal proceedings on the mass execution of Chechen residents. In particular, investigators noted that two persons from the "execution list" were alive. Those people, who introduced themselves as Shamkhan Yusupov and Makhma Muskiev, said that no one had detained or tortured them in the winter and spring of 2017. Copies of passports were attached to their explanatory notes, reports the article by Elena Milashina "The Chechen Forgery" posted today by the "Novaya Gazeta".

In September 2017, in Chechnya, Russia's Ombudsperson Tatiana Moskalkova met the authors of the above mentioned explanatory notes. Journalists of the "Novaya Gazeta" compared the video footage of the meeting with the photo table of the Chechen Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA), which contained the data of 67 people detained in January 2017. It turned out that the man who at the meeting with Tatiana Moskalkova introduced himself as Makhma Muskiev looked like a detainee, but had eyes of a different colour, a different nose shape, and his hair grew in other direction. The investigating materials contained the information about Umar Turkoev, a brother of Makhma Muskiev, who looked identically like the person who met Tatiana Moskalkova.

"There is no doubt that it was Umar Turkoev who was captured on video by officers of the Russian's Ombudsperson, while his brother Makhma Muskiev clearly appeared as a detainee on the photo table of the Chechen MIA," concluded Elena Milashina.

Shamkhan Yusupov also had a brother who, according to Elena Milashina, also pretended to be him. "The brother of Shamkhan Yusupov looked like him without any visible distinctions. The Yusupov brothers were identical twins," reports the article posted by the "Novaya Gazeta".

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on January 27, 2020 at 05:05 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.