CoE urges to investigate torture of Chechen Tepsurkaev

Russian authorities must ensure the safety of Salman Tepsurkaev, the kidnapped moderator of the Telegram channel 1ADAT, and to investigate the fact of his torture and rape, Dunja Mijatović, the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe (CoE), has stated.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that the video, in which a naked man sits on a bottle, explaining that he is doing this as punishment for cooperating with the oppositional Telegram channel 1ADAT, caused a broad resonance in Chechnya. In his other videos, he stated that he was "handed over" to special services, and explained his self-humiliation by the received threat of death.

If a resident of Chechnya is forced to record a video where he sits on a bottle, a criminal case on rape should be initiated, Evgeny Chernousov, an advocate, believes. The lawyers of the Human Rights Centre (HRC) "Memorial" treat it as humiliation and torture.

According to Dunja Mijatović, Tepsurkaev was kidnapped on September 5 in the Krasnodar Territory. This is "a grave human rights violation," the website of the CoE reports.