The Committee against Torture Interregional NGO received information that the inquest in relation to Igor KALIAPIN initiated by the regional Office of the Federal Security Service and carried out by the Nizhny Novgorod Office of the Russian Investigative Committee as part of investigation into alleged disclosure of investigative secrets, had been entrusted to the Moscow Office of the Russian Investigative Committee on territorial grounds. This is already the third territorial investigative institution to dig for grounds for initiating criminal proceeings against the human rights activist. Earlier, a similar inquest has been carried out by investigators from the North Caucasian Federal District and the Nizhny Novgorod Region.
Let us recall that they try to accuse Igor KALIAPIN of preliminary investigation data disclosure. Implied are: a few publications by Elena MILASHINA in the newspaper Novaya Gazeta (Kadyrov’s Bashful Guests, A Failed Confrontation, Vertical Powerlessness, and Chechnya Is Worth Protection); the article The Caucasian Greyhounds by Svetlana REITER published in the Esquire magazine and recognized the 2011 best publication by the Independent Media Publishing House; and Igor KALIAPIN’s The Chechen Diaries published first in the blogosphere an then, on the Committee against Torture’s website. These publications deal with crimes committed by Chechen policemen: murders, torture, forced disappearances, and systematic sabotage of investigation into these crimes on the part of investigative authorities. In one of such cases, Igor KALIAPIN acts as a representative of Islam UMARPASHAYEV, the affected person, who was subjected to abduction, torture and four months’ unlawful detention at a base of the Chechen Special Police Force (OMON) in 2009. In virtue of this function of his, Igor KALIAPIN took part in a number of investigative actions.
It should be noted that the investigators have found nothing untrue in Kaliapin’s numerous public utterances containing accusations against Chechen law enforcement officers who malevolently and systematically violate Russian law. Apparently, the only thing they are worried about is the mere fact that such information has been disclosed, whereas no one seems to even try to consider the truthfulness of this information.
Furthermore, the inquest in relation to Igor KALIAPIN initiated by the regional Office of the Federal Security Service (whose officers have never had and still do not have anything to do with this case) is so absurd that not a single investigator appears to want to get involved in and take the responsibility for the initiation of criminal proceeings. The investigators from the North Caucasian Federal District and the Nizhny Novgorod Region have already shown they were manifestly unwilling to fulfill the will of Kadyrov and the Federal Security Service (FSB). Now it’s Moscow’s turn.
Here, you can find a history of the Committee against Torture’s harassment due to its work in the Chechen Republic.