Representatives of the Public Commission on Chechnya have addressed Y. Chayka, Russian Prosecutor General, and V.Lednyov, head of the Investigation Administration of the Investigation Committee under the RF Prosecutor’s Office for Chechnya, asking them to check the circumstances of the JMG lawyers’ unlawful detention by officers of the Shaly District Department of Internal Affairs. Human rights defenders also urge the authorities to perform a check and evaluate the quality of prosecutorial supervision over the lawfulness of detentions.
You may remember that on 7 February 2010 around 7 p.m. in Shaly, Chechnya, the police detained three human rights defenders: Dmitry Yegoshin (Regional NGO “Man and Law”, Yoshkar-Ola), Roman Veretennikov (NGO “Mothers in support of the detainees, indictees and convicts”, Krasnodar), Vladislav Sadykov (Bashkirian represenatation of INGO “Committee against Torture”). The detention was organized by Magomed Daudov, head of the Shaly District Department of Internal Affairs, and performed under his personal supervision. The detainees spent the night of 07 – 08 February 2010 in the rooms of the Shaly District Department of Internal Affairs unable to leave the building and having no clue about the grounds for their detention. They were released at about 10 a.m.
The three detainees are lawyers of the Joint Mobile Group (JMG) of Russian human rights defenders that has been working in Chechnya since November 2009 investigating into recent allegations of torture, abduction and notorious murders in that Russian region.
On 10 February 2010 workers of the Joint Mobile Group under the Public Commission for Chechnya Veretennikov, Sadykov and Yegoshin detained by the Chechen police filed an application about the crime to the Shaly Interdistrict Investigation Department of the Investigation Administration of the Investigation Committee under the RF Prosecutor’s Office for Chechnya.
The applicants were minutely questioned about the circumstances of their detention. Today it is planned to examine the scene of the incident – Shaly DIA. Besides, Veretennikov, Sadykov and Yegoshin intend to file a motion asking the authorities to take certain investigative steps.