Mothers of Dagestanis killed in Chechnya report witnesses to kidnappings

Relatives of the eight young people from Dagestan killed in Chechnya rely on testimonies of the witnesses, who can tell how the young men were kidnapped in their republic. The trial should be held in any region of the Russian Federation, except for Chechnya, the casualties' mothers believe.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that the Supreme Court (SC) of Chechnya began considering the case of eight Dagestanis, who, according to law enforcers, had been preparing a terror act and were killed in a shootout. Andrei Sabinin, an advocate for the "Agora", asked to transfer the consideration of the case to another region. Relatives of the casualties, who had earlier reported their kidnapping, demanded to combine into one case the shootout in Chechnya and kidnappings in Dagestan.

"The defence considers it fundamentally important that the case be considered in another region of Russia, but not in Chechnya," Andrei Sabinin has stated. According to his story, in the favourable for the defence version, will only result in the acquittal of the young men, but will not shed light on the circumstances of their kidnappings.

Umraikhan Gasanova, the mother of the missing Islam Magomedov, is confident that holding the trial in Dagestan will facilitate the defendants' acquittal. At the same time, she fears that the local court will try to whitewash the Dagestani law enforcers involved.