Hotel employee in Gelendjik tells details of Tepsurkaev's kidnapping

Salman Tepsurkaev tried to hide from the people who came for him to the Gelendjik hotel, and obeyed them after a few words, spoken to him not in Russian, a hotel employee told the "Caucasian Knot".

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on September 7-8 in Chechnya, and then beyond its borders, the video, in which a naked man sits on a bottle, explaining that he is doing this as punishment for cooperating with the oppositional 1ADAT Telegram Channel, has caused huge resonance. The channel's authors are sure that the moderator of their chat, Salman Tepsurkaev, was kidnapped and publicly humiliated by law enforcers.

An employee of the hotel in Gelendjik, from where Salman Tepsurkaev was forcibly taken away to some unknown place, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent, on condition of anonymity, that several men in black clothes had come for the young Chechen. After they entered the hotel, one of them showed a policeman's ID to the receptionist.

"The men spoke with accent and asked where Tepsurkaev lived. Then they took him out, he tried to escape, but saw that some men were also standing at the entrance. He grabbed a column in our foyer and did not want to go with them. Then they told him something in another language, and he went," the hotel employee said.

He has added that the hotel administrator pressed the panic button to call a detachment of private security. "Tepsurkaev was taken away very quickly. Only then policemen came; we explained the situation and decided not to write an application; and they left," the hotel employee has noted.

The press service of the Chief Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) of Russia for the Krasnodar Territory informed the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent that a check had begun of the video footage posted by the "Committee against Torture" (CaT).

The video, obtained by CaT's lawyers shows one of the kidnappers entering the hotel through the main entrance, while another remains in the street and controls the exit. Then the man, whom human rights defenders identified as Salman Tepsurkaev, is taken out of the hotel by two men. Together they go around the corner of the building and disappear from the camera's view.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on September 15, 2020 at 09:00 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.