Igor Kalyapin: «At about 6 p.m. I checked in room 2401 of the Grozny-City hotel. About 40 minutes later two journalists and a cameraman showed up – when I was in Ingushetia I promised to give them interview as soon as I arrive in Grozny. When we started recording the interview someone knocked on the door.
A man about 60 years of age stepped in, he introduced himself as a General Director of the hotel; a security guard wearing black uniform and some middle-aged man were with him. The director told me that since I was criticizing the Head of Chechnya and the Chechen police, and he himself loved Ramzan Akhmatovich very much, I had to leave the hotel. I told him that his actions were illegal and demanded that he gave me a written notice that I was ousted because I don’t like Kadyrov. His answer was: “you’d better search for fools when you look in the mirror”.
After that I was convoyed downstairs where I was detained by a crowd of women (about 30 people), they were apparently gathered in haste from the personnel of the hotel and boutiques located at the ground floor. All of them started shouting «how dare you speak ill of Ramzan». When I tried to answer they shouted “we don’t want to listen to you”. Nevertheless, they did not let me leave the hotel. I realized that they were holding me up on purpose, waiting for arrival of the attacker’s group.
But I had nowhere to go or run anyway. I let my colleagues free back in the afternoon, by daylight, and coming to Grozny in order to pick me up at that time was not the right thing to do. It was obvious that I would not be allowed to check in any hotel in Grozny. Any of my Chechen friends, living in Grozny, would in under mortal danger. In general, I was in no hurry and no help was coming to me from anywhere. I started to call Chairman of the Presidential Council of Human Rights Mr.Fedotov, but it was too late… The rest of what happened is known».