USA closes entry for Chechen Premier

The US Department of State has banned Muslim Khuchiev, the Chairman of Chechen Government (Premier), to visit the USA, treating him involved in human rights violations.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that, after the announcement of the launch of the Moscow Mechanism in relation to Russia, an Austrian expert of the OSCE (Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe) studied the information on gross human rights violations in Chechnya and prepared a report on them. Ii was published on December 20, 2018, and contained information about violent disappearances, acts of torture, extrajudicial executions, pressure on rights defenders and persecutions of gays in Chechnya as indisputable facts.

The US Department of State explained the sanctions against Muslim Khuchiev by the report of the OSCE expert. "The Department of State possesses reliable information that Muslim Khuchiev took part in acts of torture," the Department asserts in its statement, not specifying the information. The Department of State has called on Russian authorities to bring Khuchiev and other Chechen officials to responsibility for human rights violations.

In his turn Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of Chechnya, said that the introduced ban will not harm Khuchiev at all, and treated the decision of the US Department of State as a "humorous performance."

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on April 25, 2019 at 09:39 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.