Novaya Gazeta journalist Yelena Milashina suggests that the attack on her and lawyer Alexander Nemov in Grozny was connected with their search for Yasin Khalidov, a former employee of the Republican National Guard, Yasin Khalidov. She wrote about this in the article “Chechen Edward Snowden” on the Novaya Gazeta website.
In the spring, Yasin Khalidov tried to leave Russia after he told the opposition Chechen telegram channel 1ADAT information about the methods of work of the security forces in the republic. At the end of May, he was detained at the border with Kazakhstan and handed over to the officers of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Omsk Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. After that, Khalidov disappeared. Milashina believes that he was taken away by the Chechen security forces.
“Alexander Nemov and I were attacked so that we would stop looking for Yasin Khalidov. And as a result, they did everything so that not only journalists and lawyers, but also investigators would start looking for him, ”the journalist writes in her article.
According to Milashina, members of the Chechen transport riot police could have attacked her and Nemov. The journalist reported this to the investigator from Chechnya during interrogation.
On the morning of July 4, Milashina and Nemov were driving from Grozny airport to the sentencing of Zarema Musayeva. Three other cars blocked their taxis. People in black balaclavas came out of them, they started beating the correspondent of Novaya Gazeta and the defender with their feet and clubs, threatened them with murder, took away and destroyed the equipment.
Doctors in a Moscow hospital diagnosed the journalist with a closed craniocerebral injury and fractures of the hands, and the lawyer had multiple hematomas, bruises and a stab wound to the leg. They were discharged from the hospital on July 12.
The case of the attack on Milashina and Nemov was opened under six articles of the Criminal Code: unlawful deprivation of liberty committed by a group of persons, obstruction of journalistic activities, combined with the destruction of property, robbery with a weapon, car theftwith non-life-threatening violence, threat bodily harm, as well as destruction documents.
In Chechnya, Novaya Gazeta journalist Elena Milashina and lawyer Alexander Nemov were severely beaten. Main