According to the website Kavkaz-Uzel, on the evening of October 17, mobsters from Kadyrov’s puppet regime beat up a human rights defender and her 18-year old daughter in the Avtorkhanovsky (formerly Leninsky) district of Grozny.

A staff member from the “Union of NGOs (Soyuz Nepravitelstvennix Orgaanizatsiy)” called the correspondent from the Kavkaz-Uzel website and informed them about the event. “On the evening of October 17, four armed men in camouflage uniforms, which are worn by Kadyrov’s forces, came to the apartment of a human rights defender who works for the ‘Human Rights Center of Chechen Republic (Pravozasitniy Tsentr Chechensky Respubliki)’. While two of them waited at the entrance, two others entered the flat and severely beat the human rights defender and her daughter. The attackers did not identify themselves and did not give any reasons for the attack. They simply threatened the victims with physical harm. The attackers also smashed the activist’s telephones before they left the scene,” said the staff member from the NGO who asked not to be identified.

This is not the first act of aggression toward human rights defenders in Chechnya. Earlier cases had many of them being threatened and some of them being beaten. Also recall that last year in Chechnya, the human rights defenders Natalya Estemirova, Zarema Sadulayeva and Alik Dzhabrailov were been kidnapped and killed. The perpetrators and instigators of these crimes are still unknown.

*Text was translated by Waynakh Online and edited by Michael Capobianco