Gezmakhmaev's relatives receive threats after article about executions in Chechnya

Law enforcers have demanded from Suleiman Gezmakhmaev's relatives to force him to declare his story about torture and killings in Chechnya to be fiction, and threatened the family with problems, their fellow villagers have informed.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on March 15, the "Novaya Gazeta" published a part of the inquiry into extrajudicial executions in Chechnya. Suleiman Gezmakhmaev, a Chechen law enforcer who was an eyewitness of those events, told the newspaper how those residents of Chechnya detained in January 2017, prior to extrajudicial execution, were forced to self-incriminate under torture.

On March 16, law enforcers brought three Suleiman Gezmakhmaev's relatives, living in the village of Achkhoi-Martan, to Grozny and presented an ultimatum to them. The men were demanded to inform where the mother, brother and sister of the former law enforcer (Suleiman Gezmakhmaev) were then. They also demanded from the relatives to force Suleiman to write a letter of repentance, in which he would call the data reported to the "Novaya Gazeta" as fictitious and untrue.

"[Law enforcers] told the Gezmakhmaevs that if this is not done in the coming days, 'relatives will feel very bad.' Then, the men were set free," says the message from the Human Rights Centre (HRC) "Memorial"* received by the "Caucasian Knot" today. Human rights defenders learned about the incident from fellow villagers of Suleiman Gezmakhmaev's relatives.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on March 17, 2021 at 07:09 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.