2023-07-04 20:11:36
Elena Milashina, a well-known investigative journalist for the Russian biweekly Nóvaya Gazeta, and the Russian lawyer, Alexander Némov, have been brutally attacked on Tuesday by unknown persons in Grozny, the capital of the Russian Caucasian republic of Chechnya. The worst part of her was taken by her, who has a head injury and several broken fingers on both hands.
She was also smeared with “zelionka”, a green antiseptic that takes several days to disappear from the skin. The lawyer, who is part of the Committee Against Torture, was also beaten and suffered a deep stab wound to his right leg. The information has been disseminated by the human rights NGO Memorial, assuring that Milashina “has her fingers broken and temporarily loses consciousness (…) her entire body is full of bruises.”
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The incident occurred in the morning when the reporter and the lawyer were traveling by car between the airport and the Chechen capital to attend the verdict of a trial. It was then that another vehicle occupied by heavily armed, masked men intercepted them and forced them to stop, after which the beating began, during which, according to Nóvaya Gazeta sources, batons and gun butts were used. They also seized their computers and mobile phones. Milashina had to leave Russia temporarily last year after Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov threatened her and called her a “terrorist” for documenting extrajudicial killings.
“They are not gang members”
Speaking to the Russian digital publication Meduza, Sergei Bábinets, head of the Committee Against Torture, has assured that the attackers “reminded Milashina and Némov of all the trials and cases in which they were involved.” “This, of course, is not an attack by gang members, but an assault for their activities,” he added. They were first transferred to a local hospital and then, at the request of the Russian Ombudsman, Tatiana Moskalkova, forwarded to a medical center in Beslan in the republic of North Ossetia.
Milashina and Nemov flew to Grozny to attend the reading of the sentence against Zarema Musáyeva, mother of Abubakar Yangulbayev, a former lawyer for the Committee Against Torture, and Ibragim Yangulbayev, one of the alleged founders of the Chechen opposition movement Adat. In January 2022, Chechen security forces kidnapped Musaeva in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod and took her to Chechnya. She was charged with assault on a police officer. The Chechen president then said that, during her transfer from Nizhny Novgorod, Musáyeva allegedly “attacked a police officer and almost put out his eye.” She, who is considered innocent of all the charges, has been sentenced this Tuesday to five and a half years in prison, which is the sentence that the prosecutor had requested. The assaulted considered the treatment that Musáyeva has been receiving during the process “unfair” and “abusive”.
The attack against Milashina and Nemov has been condemned by the Union of Journalists and the Human Rights Council attached to the Russian Presidency. Kadyrov, a recalcitrant supporter of invading and razing all of Ukraine and whom the Russian opposition places behind notorious murders such as the former minister and governor, Boris Nemtsov, the journalist from Nóvaya Gazeta, Anna Politkóvskaya, or the human rights activist, Natalia Estemírova, could be losing favor with the Kremlin because he is a figure of some importance among Russia’s supporters of a strong hand and expeditious methods, as has been the case with the patron of the Wagner Group mercenaries, Evgueni Prigozhin.
“Unacceptable”
Surprisingly, in almost non-existent diatribes against the Chechen president until now, Senator Andrei Klishás declared on Tuesday that “the attack against a journalist and a lawyer in Chechnya requires a tough response from law enforcement.” For his part, also in an unusual speech, Deputy Alexander Jinshtein wrote on social media that “attacks on journalists, regardless of their position, are criminal and unacceptable.”
The attack occurred when Milashina and Nemov were traveling by car to attend the verdict of a trial
It has also noted that the Press Policy Committee of the State Duma (Lower House of Parliament) “will send an appeal to the General Prosecutor’s Office and the Investigative Committee with the request to put the investigation under special control.” Even the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, affirmed this Tuesday that what happened with the journalist and the lawyer in Grozny is a “very serious” incident, although he has called for letting the Justice act and has indicated that Moskalkova has become charge of the matter.
In February of last year, Nóvaya Gazeta announced that “taking into account the numerous personal threats launched in recent days by the Chechen leadership against the journalist Elena Milashina, the editorial office decided to send her out of Russia.” Dmitri Murátov, director of Nóvaya Gazeta and Nobel Peace Prize winner, has also been the object of attacks, intimidation and reprimanded several times for criticizing the power in Russia and the Chechen president.
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