The US State Department has expressed its concern over incoming reports of "abductions and arbitrary detentions" allegedly carried out by the Chechen authorities.

"The United States is concerned about continued reports of dozens of kidnappings and arbitrary detentions of relatives of Chechen human rights activists and dissidents in recent weeks," the State Department said in a statement.

The department was outraged that such a “pressure tactic” is used against relatives of “dissidents who live outside of Russia”, mentioning Zarema Musaeva, the wife of former judge Saydi Yangulbaev.

They called on the Chechen authorities to release all "unjustly detained."

“We reject the baseless attempts by the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, to denigrate human rights activists and independent journalists, and we call on him to stop persecution by the authorities of dissidents, representatives of the LGBTQI + community, religious and ethnic minorities and other people, including repression against members of their families,” the foreign policy statement said. US department.

On the evening of January 20, armed men in masks, presumably officers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs from Chechnya, broke into Yangulbaev's apartment in Nizhny Novgorod. Under the pretext of a decision by the Chechen investigation to forcibly bring Yangulbaev and his wife Zarema for interrogation, they took the judge's wife away. The motives of the alleged security officials may be related to the persecution in Chechnya of bloggers involved in the opposition Telegram channel 1ADAT. One of them is the couple's son, lawyer and human rights activist Abubakar Yangulbaev.

bbabo.Net