Civil Society Institutions and Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation received an answer from the General Prosecutor’s Office to the application related to the attack on the office of the Committee Against Torture in Chechnya.   

Deputy General Prosecutor of the Russian Federation Victor Grin reported that the management of the subordinate Prosecutor’s Office did not make any decisions in relation to human rights defenders’ complaints about the inaction of the police officers during the illegal entry and destruction of the Committee’s property.  Due to that the Prosecutor of the Chechen Republic was instructed to organize a check of the data reported by the non-commercial organizations representatives and inform the Council on the results.  

As we have previously reported, the incident took place on 3 June during the rally in support of Djambulat Dadayev, killed by the Stavropol police.   A group of bandits destroyed the human rights defenders’ car and broke into their premises, having opened the metal doors with a bar and climbed on the balcony. When the human rights defenders, afraid for their safety, escaped from the office through the window, the bandits destroyed the organization’s equipment and took away the documents related to the cases which the Committee Against Torture is dealing with at the moment.      

This attack on the office of the organization in Grozny became the second one in a short period of time and, similarly, is still unsolved. In December last year after several thousand strong anti-terrorist rally in the course of which calls to end up the activity of the NGO were voiced, human rights defenders office was destroyed and burned down, and they spent a night in the hotel cordoned off by the police. Then the Council issued a statement, in which it expressed deep concern with what was happening and referred the attack to the chain of events initiated with the statements of the Head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov that it was necessary to burn down the houses of militants and deport their relatives from the Republic – in essence, calling for law-enforcement officers to perform crimes.
  
Source: website of Civil Society Institutions and Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation