Ingush Ombudsman Admits Sautiyeva’s Rights were Violated in Stavropol Detention Center

Paul Goble

            Staunton, January 25 – Lawyers for Zarifa Sautiyeva, the only woman among the Ingush detainees, say that the republic’s ombudsman has finally acknowledged that her rights were violated at the Stavropol detention center and in the way in which she was moved there (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/345111/).

            The acknowledgement is a welcome victory, but it remains unclear whether the violations have or will be corrected – that is beyond the ombudsman’s powers – or whether the authorities will release Sautiyeva before March 11, the date to which her detention has been extended. She has agreed to end the hunger strike she had declared to attract attention to these abuses.

            Meanwhile, however, the powers that be in Ingushetia are now turning their attention to the First Aid group which has provided medical and personal needs items to the Ingush detainees. Its organizers fear that this is the first step toward declaring it falsely “a foreign agent” and closing it down (6portal.ru/posts/кому-помешала-неотложка/).

            Boris Kodzoyev, the group’s leader says that “the representatives of the powers do not like any consolidation of citizens even in a purely humanitarian way.” He has been called in for “a prophylactic conversation” at the Center for Countering Extremism in Ingushetia. Other members of the group have also been subject to the same methods.

            Of particular concern is that Moscow writer and activist Elizaveta Aleksandrova-Zorina, who has organized pro-Ingush demonstrations in the Russian capital, was met at the railroad station on her arrival in Magas and then taken for a similar conversation which focused on her ties with the First Aid group. 

            And in the case of Musa Malsagov and Bagaudin Khautiyeva, two Ingush opposition leaders, experts testified that they could not find any indication of extremism in their words but rather had identified ways in which the two had sought to calm the situation during the March 2019 protests (zamanho.com/?p=16435, doshdu.com/obvinennye-v-jekstremizme-ingushskie-aktivisty-ne-prizyvali-k-nasiliju-protiv-silovikov/,  fortanga.org/2020/01/advokat-magomed-bekov-ekspertiza-ukazyvaet-na-otritsatelnyj-rezultat-no-delo-ob-ekstremizme-vozbudili/ and kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/345033/).