The head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, instructed armed men to follow the lawyers of the "Team Against Torture" who are defending Zarema Musaeva. Her son, Abubakar Yangulbaev, spoke about this in his Telegram channel.
“They pursue them in every location: hotel, court, cafe, airport, and do not try to hide. They openly show their weapons and their faces,” he writes.
According to Yangulbaev, lawyers are worried about their safety, as attacks on human rights activists and journalists in Chechnya are not uncommon. They filed an application addressed to the director of the FSB of Russia Alexander Bortnikov.
As Yangulbaev told The Insider, CPT lawyers are monitored every time they visit Chechnya:
“They are being watched all the time. The people who do this do not hide themselves at all, but they do not report it either. Such surveillance has already been for Milashina <newspaper journalist writing about human rights violations in Chechnya – ed. The Insider> – up to my mom's business. There is always surveillance of defenders, journalists, and lawyers. Ever since my mother was imprisoned, the lawyers who visit her have been monitored. The names of these people are unknown."
On January 20, Chechen security forces broke into the Nizhny Novgorod apartment of Saidi Yangulbaev, a former judge of the Supreme Court of Chechnya, and his wife, Zarema Musaeva. He himself could not be kidnapped in view of the judicial status of immunity, but his wife was taken away. The reason for the abduction was that Musayeva was allegedly a witness in a fraud case in Grozny, where she was eventually taken by security forces.
On February 2, Musayeva was arrested for two months. The woman is accused of allegedly scratching the face of the district police officer, who drew up an administrative report on her. Subsequently, the arrest was extended several times. Now Musayeva is still in jail.