Today after 10 a.m. the administration of the Shaly District Department of Internal Affairs released three Russian human rights defenders detained yesterday: 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 representation of INGO “Committee against Torture”). Sadykov, Yegoshin and Veretennikov have arrived in Grozny.

The three human rights defenders are lawyers of the Joint Mobile Group (JMG) of Russian human rights defenders that has been working in Chechnya since November 2009 investigating into the allegations of torture, abduction and notorious murders in that Russian region.  

In course of the detention the JMG members were searched. The police also inspected the JMG service vehicle and seized an audio-video recorder. The police intentionally disabled the recorder.

The detainees spent the night in different rooms of the Department of Internal Affairs; in the morning law enforcement agents suggested that the human rights defenders should write a note stating that none of them had any claims against the police.

We are going to appeal against the unlawful detention of Mr. Sadykov, Mr. Yegoshin and Mr. Veretennikov performed without preparation of the required procedural documents in the nearest future.