Human rights ombudsman in Chechnya Mansur Soltaev posted a video of his meeting with Selima Ismailova, a 19-year-old girl who tried to go abroad but was forced back to Chechnya.
Soltaev wrote that Ismailova was at home in Achkhoy-Martan with her family and she was doing well. “She asks disinformers to leave her alone and not to spread false information about her disappearance. Let me remind you that some publics on social networks wrote that Selima Ismailova had disappeared. They also collected a petition demanding an investigation into her disappearance, ”the message says.
In the video, Soltaev asks a girl in a headscarf questions: “You are not in danger of anything?”, “Do you freely go outside?” The girl answers "no" and "yes".
On June 12, the police detained Selima Ismailova at the Moscow airport when the girl was trying to fly to Germany. According to the Marem human rights foundation, she ran away from home because her father regularly beat her. The police explained the detention of Selima by the fact that she was allegedly wanted on suspicion of theft. The girl was handed over to the Chechen security forces, who took her back to Chechnya.
The media published an audio recording in which Ismailova's father threatens to break all her limbs.
Women from Chechnya and other North Caucasian republics fleeing domestic violence often face opposition from security forces who “return” them to their families. So, in the summer of 2021, the security forces abducted Chechen Khalimat Taramova from a shelter for victims of domestic violence in Makhachkala.
Later, the Chechen TV channel Grozny showed a report about Taramova, where the girl told the camera that she was with her family and everything was fine with her. Later it became known that the family sent the girl to a certain "clinic" in order to "cure" her of her homosexuality.