The Department of the Investigative Committee for Chechnya refused to open a criminal case in connection with the kidnapping of Idris Arsamikov, who was detained at Domodedovo airport in February and forcibly taken to the republic. This is reported by Crisis Group CK SOS.
According to the Investigative Committee, the policemen who prevented the man from returning to the Netherlands did not violate anything. The security forces allegedly simply offered Arsamikov to return to his homeland, “because his mother is worried about him,” and he voluntarily went with them.
Arsamikov said that in 2018 he was tortured near Grozny because of his homosexuality. With the help of human rights activists, the Chechen was able to leave for the Netherlands and lived there on a humanitarian residence permit. In 2023, the man returned to Chechnya for his father's funeral, but on his way back from Russia, on February 15, he was detained at Domodedovo airport and handed over to Chechen police.
This was justified by the reference to Arsamikov in the case of fraud on a large scale (part 3 of article 159 of the Criminal Code), which was signed that day by the head of the criminal investigation department MIA for the Shelkovsky District of Chechnya. After his arrest, lawyers were not allowed to see him; in March, a Chechen court recognized this action as legal.
A few days after the arrest, Arsamikov published two videos on VKontakte, in which he asked LGBT people to “leave behind” him, and said that he was going to war in Ukraine.
In April, a Sota correspondent, together with SK SOS lawyers, came to the village of Starogladovskaya, where a man was born and lived. They managed to talk to Arsamikov's mother, who said that her son was alive and «working on a tractor in the fields.» Other villagers reported that he was actually “imprisoned” in his native village.