In Chechnya, a Russian investigative journalist, an employee of Novaya Gazeta publication Elena Milashina and a lawyer Alexander Nemov, who came to Grozny to attend a court session related to one of the high-profile cases, were attacked.
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According to information by Committee Against Torture, the incident happened in the morning on Grozny airport road. Armed assailants roadblocked the journalist and lawyer with three cars and physically assaulted them.
“Masked people severely beat them and threatened them, including with firearms. Alexander Nemov was stabbed in the leg with a sharp object, possibly a knife. They beat them with hands and feet, and made references to their work, what Elena Milashina wrote about. It is clear that this wasn’t a random crime, but a targeted attack due to their occupation,” stated the head of Group Against Tortures’ Grozny branch, Sergey Babinets.
Milashina and Nemov refused to testify at the Grozny hospital. According to Sergey Babinets, by the decision of the leader of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, both of them will be taken to Beslan Hospital in North Ossetia by ambulance.
Novaya Gazeta also reported on the incident. According to their information, masked assailants took Milashina and Nemov's mobile phones and demanded they unlock them, and destroyed their equipment and documents. According to Novaya Gazeta, Elena Milashina has a traumatic brain injury and broken fingers. She passed out several times.
Elena Milashina has been writing about human rights violations in Chechnya for years and has repeatedly been the target of Ramzan Kadyrov's threats. In early February 2022, Milashina reported that she was forced to leave Russia due to threats.
The case on which the court of Grozny announced their verdict today, and which Milashina was supposed to cover, concerns the kidnapping of Zarema Musaeva. On January 20, 2022, Chechen security forces broke into the apartment of the retired judge of the Supreme Court of Chechnya, Saidi Yangulbaev, in Nizhny Novgorod, and forcibly took his wife Zarema Musaeva to Chechnya. A criminal case was initiated against Musaeva on charges of assault on a police officer and fraud. Today she was found guilty and sentenced to 5.5 years in prison. The Chechen government links the Yangulbayevs with the activities of the 1ADAT movement, which openly criticizes Kadyrov. Family members of Zarema Musaeva - husband and children have left the Russian Federation.
