Lawyers for Five Ingush Protesters Appeal Illegal Extension of Their Detention

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 6 – Lawyers for Akhmed Barakhoyev, Barakh Chmurziyev, Malsag Uzhakov, Musa Malsago and Bagaudin Khautiyev are appealing is the illegal extension of their detention by a Stavropol court beyond the legal limit of a year. Not expecting Russian appellate courts to overrule this, the lawyers say they are already planning to appeal to Strasbourg.

            Russian law limits detentions before trial to 12 months, but the government often violates that by insisting that it does not have to count from the date of the original detention but from the time of the last charge. If that rule were allowed, anyone could be detained indefinitely if the authorities chose to keep bringing new charges.

            The lawyers for the five say that the Russian judge not only ignored that law but also their arguments at the April 4 hearing about mitigating circumstances that would make home detention more appropriate (fortanga.org/2020/04/advokaty-liderov-protesta-obzhalovali-reshenie-suda-o-prodlenii-sroka-soderzhaniya-pod-strazhej-pyaterym-figurantam/).

            In one case, lawyers for Akhmed Barakhoyev say, the judge accepted prosecutor’s charges their client had concealed the fact that he had dual citizenship despite the fact that officials knew that it has been annulled (fortanga.org/2020/04/advokat-sledstvie-znaya-chto-u-ahmeda-barahoeva-net-vtorogo-grazhdanstva-obvinilo-ego-v-sokrytii-fakta-ego-nalichiya/).

            Meanwhile, a documentary film entitled “Repression” about the lives of three Ingush victims of repressive actions by Moscow and Magas including Akhmed Pogorov, a former official and present activist who has outraged officials by his ability to escape arrest and issuing statements critical of them (fortanga.org/2020/04/repressii-otets-i-syn-pogorovy/).