No Criminal Charges to Be Brought in Female Genital Case in Ingushetia

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 10 – The horrific case of a nine-year-old girl who was subjected to female genital mutilation in a Magas clinic in 2019 that attracted widespread attention earlier this year (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/06/female-mutilation-in-ingushetia-not.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/05/russian-politicians-feminists-demand.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/05/abuses-in-ingushetia-call-attention-to.html) apparently won’t result in criminal charges.

            Tatyana Savvina, a lawyer for the Legal Initiative group, says investigators in Ingushetia have decided not to bring criminal charges against the clinic or the medical personnel involved, citing that the clinic had already been fined 50,000 rubles (750 US dollars) after it was inspected in the wake of reports about this case (akcent.site/novosti/8734).

              A more important factor may be the fact that female genital mutilation is not banned by law in the Russian Federation. Consequently, whenever cases are brought, they are brought under paragraphs of the Russian criminal code governing the infliction of harm during medical procedures.

            Meanwhile, there were two other cases that throw light on the rules of the game in Ingushetia. In the first, Moscow sent in siloviki to arrest Yakub Belkoroyev, a deputy in the Ingush Popular Assembly who has been charged in connection with the murder of the head of the Ingush MVD Center for Countering extremism.

            After his arrest, the Russian siloviki evacuated him from the republic back to the Russian capital (capost.media/news/mainhotnews/in-ingushetia-detained-the-deputy-of-bacaladilla-belkharoev/,  fortanga.org/2020/07/deputata-parlamenta-ingushetii-yakuba-belhoroeva-etapiruyut-v-moskvu/ and fortanga.org/2020/07/pravoohranitelnye-organy-zaderzhali-deputata-narodnogo-sobraniya-ingushetii-yakuba-belhoroeva/).

            And in the second, prosecutors allowed former finance minister Ruslan Tsechoyev to move from jail to house arrest despite a five-year sentence for corruption because of health problems (fortanga.org/2020/07/osuzhdennogo-na-5-let-eks-ministra-finansov-ingushetii-vypustili-iz-pod-aresta/).

            The solicitude to Tsechoyev stands in sharp contrast to the unwillingness of the authorities in Ingushetia to allow protest leaders who have not yet been tried to be released from preliminary detention and go under house arrest. Many of them also are suffering from health problems and are at risk of coronavirus infection while detained.