Fadeev urges to take Musaeva’s case from Chechen investigators

Valery Fadeev, the chief of the Human Rights Council, addressed the chair of the Investigating Committee of the Russian Federation (ICRF) with a proposal to transfer the investigation into a Zarema Musaeva’s case to the federal level or to investigators from the ICRF’s Department for the North-Caucasian Federal District (NCFD).

The “Caucasian Knot” has reported that on January 20, Zarema Musaeva, a spouse of retired federal judge Saidi Yangulbaev, was forcibly taken away by Chechen law enforcers from her apartment in Nizhny Novgorod to Grozny, after which Ramzan Kadyrov said that the Yangulbaev family faced a place “in prison or underground.” On January 31, it was reported that a criminal case had been instituted against Zarema Musaeva. According to the investigators’ version, the woman scratched the face of a law enforcer while she was in police custody. On February 1, the court ruled to arrest Zarema Musaeva for two months.

Valery Fadeev addressed Alexander Bastrykin, the chair of the ICRF, in connection with the Zarema Musaeva’s case. According to members of the Human Rights Council, the criminal case against the spouse of former federal judge Saidi Yangulbaev is closely linked to the conflict between the leaders of Chechnya and sons of Zarema Musaeva, “who are called the administrators of an Internet resource posting the texts insulting the leaders of Chechnya,” the Human Rights Council reports today.

“The rhetoric on both sides has become extremely sharp, up to public declarations by officials of the Chechen Republic with threats against the Yangulbaev family. In this situation, the course and results of the investigation into the criminal case against Zarema Musaeva can be discredited and assessed by society as prejudged and biased,” reads a fragment of the statement posted on the website of the Human Rights Council.

In order to “reduce the degree of tension,” Valery Fadeev called for the transfer of the investigation into the criminal case against Zarema Musaeva to investigators of the ICRF’s Chief Investigating Department for the North-Caucasian Federal District or to an investigator of the ICRF’s Central Office.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on February 4, 2022 at 05:10 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.