Defence: case on IS* militant grouping in Chechnya fabricated

After detention, three residents of the Naursky District were subjected to torture and forced to confess to creating an armed grouping and swearing allegiance to a leader of the terrorist organization "Islamic State"*, a defender claimed.

The Zavodskoi District Court of Grozny considers the case against Khasan Islamov, Turpal-Eli Demelkhanov, and Mikail Gazimagomadov, three residents of the village of Savelievskaya in the Naursky District of Chechnya, the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent has been informed by Dmitry Piskunov, the director of the North-Caucasian branch of the "Committee against Torture" (CaT).

"The three (defendants) allegedly formed an illegal armed formation (IAF), since they allegedly possessed three grenades [...] Furthermore, the defendants were allegedly plotting some abstract plan to attack law enforcers. No place, time, no specifics are reported. There are also no injured or victims," explains Dmitry Piskunov, who is involved in the case as one of the defenders.

According to him, the defendants were detained during the mass arrest campaign which took place in the Naursky District in February 2019. "Several dozen people were then detained. Of those detainees, three were chosen to get involved in some kind of criminal case in order to increase the crime solution rate," Dmitry Piskunov stated.

"They had been tortured for about a week. Law enforcers brought the defendants to the point when the latter were ready to confess to anything and then transferred them to another department of the law enforcement body. There, it was decided that the defendants would be treated as members of an illegal armed formation. The defendants had been illegally kept at that department of the law enforcement body for about a month and a half," said Dmitry Piskunov.

The human rights defender suggests that the defendants had been kept at the department of the law enforcement body for such a long period of time, since the law enforcers were waiting for the signs of beatings to disappear.

According to the defendants, they confessed to crimes under torture. At present, the young people deny everything, the defender notes. "We are seeking an institution of a criminal case under the article on abuse of power with the use of violence," Dmitry Piskunov explained.

* Islamic State (IS, former ISIL) is a terrorist organization banned in Russia by the court

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on October 16, 2020 at 12:08 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.