Musaeva’s defenders treat prosecutors’ arguments ungrounded

During the pleadings in court, advocates Alexander Nemov and Alexander Savin stated that investigators and public prosecutors did not provide evidence of Zarema Musaeva’s guilt in an attack on law enforcer and fraud. The advocate claim that Zarema Musaeva should be acquitted. The persecution of Zarema Musaeva is an exemplary reprisal for the activities of her sons and is designed to intimidate critics of the Chechen authorities, notes human rights defender Sergey Babinets.

The “Caucasian Knot” has reported that on June 15, the pleadings on Zarema Musaeva’s case began in the Akhmatovsky District Court of Grozny. The public prosecutor said that the guilt of Zarema Musaeva in fraud and attack on the law enforcer is confirmed by the testimony of witnesses and expert examination data. The defendant herself pleaded not guilty.

The accusation under the article on the attack on the law enforcer “fails to contain the event of a crime,” states advocate Alexander Nemov. According to him, a significant part of the witnesses, whose testimony the public prosecutors refer to, did not see how Zarema Musaeva inflicted injuries on the policeman, but they only heard about that from the injured law enforcer or third parties.

The investigators’ interest in bringing Zarema Musaeva to liability in the fraud case is “clear,” advocate Alexander Savin notes. According to him, the investigators failed to find Zarema Musaeva’s role as an accomplice in the crime.

The accusation in Zarema Musaeva’s case is based on circumstantial evidence, emphasizes Sergey Babinets, the head of the “Team against Torture”*. According to him, Zarema Musaeva “became a hostage of confrontation between the authorities of Chechnya and her sons.” Sergey Babinets considers the accusation against Zarema Musaeva as false and her case as political.

*The "Team against Torture" (formerly the "Committee against Torture" – CaT) was created by the lawyers who had earlier worked for the CaT, which was included into the register of the NCOs performing the functions of foreign agents.