The North Caucasian branch of the human rights organization «Team Against Torture» is being searched, according to the telegram channel of human rights activists.
What exactly the investigative actions are connected with is not yet known. The head of the branch, Ekaterina Vanslova, is in the building, the search is being carried out by officers of the Pyatigorsk Ministry of Internal Affairs on behalf of an investigator from North Ossetia.
Team Against Torture provides legal assistance to victims of violence by the security forces. The organization has several branches — in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Orenburg, Krasnodar and Pyatigorsk.
At different times, the organization was called the «Committee against Torture» and «Committee for the Prevention of Torture», three times the association of human rights activists was recognized as a «foreign agent». The last time this happened was in June 2022.
In 2015, a group of people attacked the office of human rights activists in Grozny; in 2016, Igor Kalyapin, who at that time headed the Committee for the Prevention of Torture, was personally attacked.
At the same time, unknown people attacked a bus with journalists and human rights activists who participated in the press tour of the Committee against Torture. It happened on the administrative border of Chechnya and Ingushetia, masked men stopped the car, dragged the passengers out into the street and beat them, and then set fire to the bus.
«Lie down, I'll kill you!». Press tour to Chechnya