Lawyers: court in Chechnya violates Musaeva’s right to defence

A notification of an advocate an hour and a half before the start of the hearing at the Supreme Court (SC) of Chechnya, which left Zarema Musaeva in custody in the case on disorganization of the activities of the penal colony, violated the equality of the parties and the defendant’s right to defence.

The “Caucasian Knot” has reported that on December 13, Zarema Musaeva was charged with disorganization of the activities of the penal colony. The defendant faces up to five years of imprisonment. A human rights defender believes that the new case against Zarema Musaeva is connected with an entry posted by a Zarema Musaeva’s son on a social networking service. On December 18, a court in Chechnya sent Zarema Musaeva to custody.

The Supreme Court (SC) of Chechnya refused to grant the defence’s appeal against the pre-trial restriction measure with respect to Zarema Musaeva in the new criminal case. The decision was made on December 28, and the defence has not yet received it.

“We haven’t received it because the hearing of the court of appeal was held on the last working day of 2024. And there were no working days in 2025 yet,” the “Team Against Torture”* reported. The human rights defenders noted that the advocate was notified of the court hearing an hour and a half before it began.

An advocate should be informed of the date and time of the court hearing seven days in advance, emphasizes a lawyer from the “Memorial” Centre for Human Rights Defence (CHRD)**.

Advocate Timur Filippov believes that in the Russian law enforcement practice, such extraordinary court hearings are common in politically motivated cases.

“This is a direct violation of the principle of adversarial proceedings and equality of the parties ... Such a violation may be grounds for recognizing the court’s decision as unlawful, but in practice, it is extremely difficult to achieve justice in such cases,” advocate Timur Filippov claimed.

*The “Team against Torture” (TaT, formerly the “Committee against Torture” – CaT) was created by the lawyers who had earlier worked for the CaT, which was included into the register of the NCOs performing the functions of foreign agents.

**As reported on the website of the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), the reason for including on March 1, 2024, the unregistered “Memorial” Centre for Human Rights Defence (CHRD) into the roster of foreign agents was the spread of “inaccurate information aimed at creating a negative image of the Russian Federation, as well as the Russian Armed Forces.”