19-year-old Salman Tepsurkaev, an activist of the Chechen opposition movement "Adat" and a moderator of the Telegram channel critical of Ramzan Kadyrov, was killed. According to "Adat", Salman was killed at the military training ground in the village of Jalka. They tied him up, put a grenade in his mouth and blew him up.
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The boy's kidnapping became known in September 2020. At the same time, a video of him apologizing and sitting on a bottle was shared on social networks.
"There is a case where we could not save a person. He was killed. This is the case of Salman Tepsurkaev, in connection with which the European Court of Human Rights recently issued a decision. We know for sure that he died. Even the torture recorded on a video camera when he was put on a bottle proves that he was tortured. We could not save this person", Olga Sadovskaya, a lawyer of the "Team Against Torture" human rights organization operating in Russia, in an interview published on August 23.
After the interview of the human rights defender, the statement was released by the "1ADAT" telegram channel of the "Adat" movement, which Salman Tepsurkaev moderated before the kidnapping. According to the movement, Salman was killed on September 15, 2020.
"We have lost hope that Salman is alive. We consider it our duty not to hide and tell the information we have obtained all this time.
After the kidnapping, the Kadyrovites forced Salman to sit on a bottle in front of the camera, after which they filmed him in staged videos as if he was walking freely in Grozny. All these videos were shot on September 7, 2020. After filming, he was taken from Grozny, the territory of the second regiment named after Akhmad Kadyrov.
Salman was killed on September 15, 2020, at the military training ground in the village of Jhalka. This is the ancestral village of Adam Delimkhanov [Russian Duma deputy from Chechnya - ed.]. They tied up Salman, put a grenade in his mouth and blew it up.
Salman was tortured for a week, humiliated and finally killed in a gruesome manner, but even this was not enough for the vile criminals of Kadyrov. The body was handed over to relatives and told to "bury him like a dog"." - Salman's body was buried in an unmarked grave," says the "Adat" movement.
According to them, the Kadyrovites wanted to intimidate the members of the movement by publicly humiliating Salman Tepsurkaev: "But with this act, they connected us and once again showed their true essence. Kadyrov humiliated himself, his immoral gang, not the Chechen people. For us, Salman was and remained a brother who wanted our homeland to be freed from these evil enemies of Allah and the Chechen people."
The European Court of Human Rights announced its decision on Salman Tepsurkaev's case in October 2021. The court found that the Russian authorities violated Articles 3 and 5 of the Convention on Human Rights - "prohibition of torture" and "right to freedom and security".
"The European Court of Human Rights recognized that Salman was a victim of abduction and torture by the employees of the state bodies, that is, the forces of Chechnya. He was illegally deprived of his liberty and subjected to cruel and degrading treatment, which was caught on video. The court found that the state did not protect Salman," said Olga Sadovskaya after the announcement of the decision.
When asked why the court did not find a violation of Article 2 of the Convention, the "right to life", the lawyer explained that at the time of filing the complaint, they could only prove that Salman had been kidnapped and tortured: "We still had hope that he was alive and with our efforts, We could survive. Therefore, the decision of the European Court is based on the facts that occurred at the time of filing the complaint.
According to the information of the non-governmental organization, Salman Tepsurkaev was kidnapped on September 6, 2020, from Gelendzhik, a neighbour of Chechnya's Krasnodar region. Eyewitnesses said that the kidnappers had certificates of employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Tepsurkaev's whereabouts were unknown for a day; however, on September 7, his phone was turned on, and his relatives found out from the geolocation data that he was in the Grozny police station. On the same day, a video was released showing the torture of the young man. The Krasnodar Investigative Committee opened the criminal case in November, just two months after Salman's kidnapping, but transferred it to the Chechen Investigative Committee in May 2021. However, the results of the investigation are not known.
