“Novaya Gazeta” article about extrajudicial executions in Chechnya to be checked, sources report

Investigators began checking for slander an article by the newspaper “Novaya Gazeta” about extrajudicial executions in Chechnya, made public by a former fighter of the Kadyrov special-purpose police regiment.

The “Caucasian Knot” has reported that Suleiman Gezmakhmaev, a former Chechen law enforcer, who witnessed the events, reported about how residents of the republic, detained in January 2017, were torture and forced to incriminate themselves before the execution.

After the publication of Suleiman Gezmakhmaev’s story, which caused a wide public outcry, relatives of fighters of the Kadyrov special-purpose police regiment accused Elena Milashina, an author of the article, of provocations. Moreover, in their appeal to Vladimir Putin, fighters of the Kadyrov special-purpose police regiment called him on to stop the “information war” against the police regiment. On March 19, Dunja Mijatović, Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, called on the Russian authorities to investigate the information about extrajudicial executions in Chechnya reported by the “Novaya Gazeta”.

After the publication, a number of Chechen officials called on to punish the authors of the article, since the text allegedly defamed the honour of the Chechen police, the Telegram-channel “Baza” reports.