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12:39, 3 July 2025

Human rights activists assess the impact of publicity in cases of illegal detainees in Chechnya

Relatives of those illegally detained in Chechnya often try to secure their release on their own, and only in extreme cases do they turn to human rights organizations, but publicity does not always help, human rights activists pointed out, commenting on information about the illegal detention of three schoolchildren by security forces in Chechnya.

As "Caucasian Knot" wrote, three 16-year-old schoolchildren have been held in one of the security agencies of Grozny since December 2024 without charges, the Memorial Human Rights Defense Center reported*.

The relatives of the detained teenagers did not contact human rights activists, a human rights activist familiar with the situation said on condition of anonymity.

"We have no contact with the relatives and we do not know whether the relatives filed complaints with the prosecutor's office or the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation. We also do not know whether there were any attempts to file lawsuits regarding illegal detention or whether they have lawyers by agreement. The answers to these questions are unknown," he told a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

There are also no additional details about the detention of the teenagers.

"They are 16 years old. There is no information about their health. They were detained during the day on the street when the boys were playing. More nothing is known," he said.

According to him, there have been precedents of releasing illegal detainees in Chechnya after a public outcry.

Appeals to law enforcement agencies of the Chechen Republic can both help and hinder the process of releasing detained teenagers, the Team Against Torture* (KPP*) notes.

"If we "proceed from Chechen realities," then there is no government agency that we would advise contacting. In a more standard situation, typical recommendations would be to contact the police department itself where the teenagers are being held, and to send a lawyer there. If a visit to this department does not bring results, then the next step would be to contact a higher department - the City Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. It would also be useful to file a statement with the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation about illegal detention in the police department. In the case of Such appeals may not only fail to help Chechnya, but there is a possibility that the situation will worsen if, for example, law enforcement officers decide to initiate a criminal case against the detainees in order to justify their long-term detention in the department. Perhaps the only recommendation that can yield at least some predictable result is to prevent any possible conflict and dangerous situations, refrain from ambiguous statements, provocative behavior, especially on the Internet in personal correspondence and comments, be careful when communicating with strangers and, especially, with law enforcement officers and their relatives,” the “Caucasian Knot” correspondent was told at the checkpoint*.

In most such cases, relatives try not to contact human rights activists and journalists.

"Just as in the answer to the first question, it is impossible to give an unambiguous recommendation on how to publicize what is happening. In the case of Movsar Umarov, missing after being detained by Chechen security forces, the public outcry has not yet yielded the desired results, and the criminal case has not been properly investigated since 2020," the human rights activists emphasized.

Movsar Umarov was detained on July 18, 2020. Initially, security forces reported that he was detained for viewing the blog of Tumso Abdurakhmanov*. However, later, relatives were informed that Movsar was involved "in some terrorist cases in Dagestan and Ingushetia." Three weeks later, his mother, Eset Umarova, was informed that her son had helped detain criminals in Dagestan and was transported to Ingushetia, where he continued to cooperate with security forces, but during the proceedings "he went into a mosque, but did not come out." Five years later, Umarov's mother cannot access the case materials on her son's disappearance. Investigators in Chechnya are not allowing Eset Umarova to access the case materials. The decision of the Visaitovsky Court on the complaint against the refusal to provide Eset Umarova with the case materials on the disappearance of her son Movsar in 2020 is challenged.

One possible outcome of widespread publicity could be the recording of a video by government officials of the victims, in which they report that "everything is fine with them," as was the case with Seda Suleimanova. Based on the experience of communicating with the families of those detained and abducted in Chechnya, one can conclude that for the most part people do not turn to human rights activists or journalists, avoid them, try not to confirm the fact that their relative has been detained, preferring to solve the problem in informal ways. Since such cases ultimately remain within the family, it is quite difficult to assess the effectiveness of this method of resolving the situation," the KPP* is confident.

On June 16, it became known that the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs had declared Seda Suleimanova wanted, whose disappearance has been investigated under the article on murder since April 2024. In January 2025, Suleimanova's friend Elena Patyaeva complained to the Prosecutor General's Office about the inaction of the investigation, stating that over 10 months the investigation had not yielded any results. On March 20, Patyaeva held a picket in Grozny with a poster: "Where is Seda?" The police detained the girl, but did not draw up a report and released her, while they called her "family case" Suleimanova's fate. A native of Chechnya, Seda Suleimanova was detained in St. Petersburg in August 2023 and taken against her will to relatives in Chechnya. After that, no news was received from her. The Human Rights Commissioner for Chechnya, Mansur Soltayev, published two videos with her, stating that the girl was fine. Her friends and human rights activists fear that she has become a victim of a so-called ""honor killing", according to the "Caucasian Knot" report "The Kidnapping of Seda Suleimanova".

The head of the "Civil Assistance* Committee Svetlana Gannushkina* notes, that in recent years there have been no cases of successful release of illegally detained persons after the problem was made public.

"Unfortunately, I do not recall any successful cases in the last year or two. I remember Suleimanova's story, but it was shown on video, but to this day no one knows where she is, whether she is alive. Therefore, the question is difficult. We need to talk about problems, but relatives always try to solve them themselves, in different ways: bribes, intermediaries, apologies. Later, when nothing produces results, they are forced to turn to human rights activists,” she told a “Caucasian Knot” correspondent.

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* is included in the register of foreign agents by the Ministry of Justice of Russia.

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Translated automatically via Google translate from https://www.kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/412767

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