Yulia Melnichenko has been released from court.

The hearing to review the administrative protocol against Yulia Melnichenko, who was detained during a solo picket outside the North Ossetian prosecutor's office, did not take place; she was released home.

As reported by the "Caucasian Knot," today Mozdok resident Yulia Melnichenko held a picket outside the North Ossetian prosecutor's office demanding an end to the repression against her family. Security forces took her to the police station, where an administrative protocol was drawn up against her for violating the decree of the head of North Ossetia on the procedure for holding public events, which does not apply to solo pickets. Melnichenko brought to court.

Yulia Melnichenko reported that the hearing on the administrative offense did not take place and she was released from court. "Despite the fact that I was brought to court for this, we were told in court that the judge was in the deliberation room and did not emerge," she told the "Caucasian Knot."

She noted that in court, she was able to consult by phone with a lawyer from the human rights project "OVD-Info" (listed as a foreign agent).

As a reminder, Mozdok resident Rostislav Melnichenko stated that in March 2019, he was beaten by a security officer and hospitalized with injuries. According to Melnichenko, the district police officer who witnessed the incident "did nothing to stop it." Investigators repeatedly refused to open a criminal case for abuse of power by a law enforcement officer, citing Melnichenko's attack on the officer, who defended himself. After Yulia Melnichenko met with the head of the Investigative Committee, the department for especially important cases took over the investigation. In September 2019, Melnichenko and his sister came to the Government House with a poster about the equality of all nationalities before the law. Lawyer Andrei Sabinin then reported that they had already "received five refusal orders from the Investigative Committee."

The "Caucasian Knot" reported that Melnichenko believes that the violations of her family's rights by government officials are ethnically motivated – back in 2019, when the beating of Rostislav Melnichenko by a security officer was being investigated, they cited the family's Ukrainian origins. "The very first question the investigator asked me during interrogation was about my nationality," Melnichenko explained.

She said her brother had been beaten several more times, and the Mozdok District Prosecutor was demanding that Melnichenko's aunt, who had been granted a life-long plot of land in 2021 for the construction of a house due to a lack of housing, be confiscated.