Sisters Zargan and Satsita Aidamirov disappeared under unclear circumstances on 9 May 2013 at the car wash in the Geldagan settlement of the Kurchaloyevsky District of the Chechen Republic. Criminal case with regard to this fact was initiated under Article 105 of the Criminal Code of the RF (“murder of two and more persons”), which subsequently was repeatedly suspended. Yesterday, the lawyers with the Committee Against Torture managed to obtain a copy of the ruling on resuming the investigation on this criminal case. However, taking into account the absence of result of the years-long investigation, human rights defenders are preparing an application to the European Court of Human Rights.
The Aidamirov sisters worked at a car wash in the Geldagan settlement and lived there in the utility area. According to the mother of the girls, Zamani Magiyeva, on 9 May 2013 a man called on her phone and presented himself as a district police officer and said that her daughters were “possibly, killed”, after that he hung up on her. When she called back, he refused to talk to her and gave her the contact of the owner of the car wash.
The car wash owner told the mother that he came and saw the car wash unlocked, despite the fact that the sisters were supposed to lock it. He called the police. The arrived relatives insisted to be let inside the car wash. Later on, at the car wash some traces of blood were found, together with blood-stained female clothes and stains on the walls of the room where the sisters lived, that looked like traces of gun shots. No documents of the missing sisters were found. Another car wash employee disappeared together with the sisters.
During the search three shotshells were seized, as well as three compressed bullets of a small-bore rifle, together with three shotshells for Kalashnikov shotgun. Up till now the investigative authorities have not been able to identify the weapons from which the shots were made.
The girls’ relatives managed to clarify that on this day there was a raid: some armed men were riding around the district in vehicles with tinted glass and detecting some violations. One of these cars with loud music on came to the car wash where the Aidamirov sisters worked. The people who lived nearby heard the shots.
Only on 11 July 2013, the investigators of the Investigative Committee initiated criminal proceedings based on the elements of crime under item “a” Part 2 Article 105 of the Criminal Code of Russia (“murder of two and more persons”). Mother of the missing sisters, Zamani Magiyeva, was declared a victim in this case. The criminal case was repeatedly transferred from one investigative body to another, but since the end of 20113 it is in the proceedings of the Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of the RF for the Chechen Republic.
On 1 August 2013, Zamani Magiyeva received two SMS-messages in the Chechen language, which stated that some specific police officers were involved in her daughters’ disappearance. These police officers were later on interrogated by the investigators; they deny their involvement in the Aidamirov sisters’ disappearance.
On 15 November 2013, Zamani Magiyeva applied to the Committee Against Torture for legal assistance.
“Just like we thought, last time this criminal case was dismissed back in June 2015. We repeatedly submitted complaints against this ruling, they were dismissed, – head of the North Caucasus branch of the Committee Against Torture Dmitry Piskounov comments. – And yesterday, not without some difficulty, we managed to literally pry the latest procedural ruling in the case from the investigators – the ruling on resuming the investigation dated 14 November 2019. We received it only one and a half months after it was passed. Now the period of the additional investigation is over, but no new procedural ruling was issued. Unfortunately, there are practically no chances that the work at the national level will lead to the punishment of the guilty, that is why in the nearest future we will submit an application to the European Court of Human Rights on behalf of the mother of the missing daughters”.