15:31, 19 August 2025

The defense appealed the verdict against Zarema Musayeva

A brief appeal against the sentence of Zarema Musayeva has already been filed. She decided to appeal it after she read the reasoned part of the decision of the Shali court, which sentenced her to four years in a penal colony.

As "Kavkazsky Uzel wrote, the prosecution demanded that Musayeva be sentenced to four years in a penal colony in the case of disrupting the work of a penal colony. The prosecution's version of Zarema Musayeva's attack on a penal colony employee is based only on his testimony; witnesses did not confirm her guilt, the defense stated, demanding that the defendant be acquitted. In her final statement, Musayeva refused to admit guilt and asked not to be sent to the penal colony where she served her first sentence, since she fears for her life. The Shali Court of Chechnya sentenced Zarema Musayeva to three years and 11 months in prison. In total, she will have to spend four years in the penal colony - one month remains from her previous sentence. Musayeva refused to appeal the verdict due to her lack of faith in the court, human rights activists reported.

On July 4, 2023, the court sentenced Zarema Musayeva to 5.5 years in prison, finding her guilty of attacking a police officer. The appellate court reduced the sentence to five years and ordered Musayeva's transfer to a penal colony. The Court of Cassation reduced Musayeva's sentence by another three months, to four years and nine months. This term expired on March 23, 2025. On November 11, 2024, it became known that a criminal case had been opened against Musayeva for disorganizing the activities of a penal colony. The investigation believes that Musayeva, returning from treatment in the same car with a penal colony employee, "hit him with her palm in the neck" and also "torn off the left shoulder strap from his uniform." Details are provided in the "Caucasian Knot" report "The Case of Zarema Musayeva".

Zarema Musayeva decided to appeal the verdict after she familiarized herself with the reasoned part of the decision of the Shali City Court, the Team Against Torture* reported today,

"We support the decision of our client. At the moment, a "brief" appeal has been filed, an additional - reasoned one - will be filed after a detailed review of the text of the court's verdict," Musayeva's lawyer Alexander Savin is quoted in the publication.

Zarema Musayeva is the wife of former federal judge Saidi Yangulbaev. Chechen security forces took her away from her apartment in Nizhny Novgorod on January 20, 2022. After this, Ramzan Kadyrov accused the Yangulbaev family of organizing a terrorist network and said that their place was "in prison or underground."

You can read about Kadyrov's conflict with the Yangulbaevs in the "Caucasian Knot" reports "How the Yangulbaevs became Kadyrov's enemies" and "The main thing about the fight between Kadyrov's men and the Yangulbaevs".

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Translated automatically via Google translate from https://www.kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/413946