Chechnya’s Deputy Minister for National Policy, External Relations, and Press and Information, Said-Magomed Bashirov, has reportedly disappeared following the distribution online of an intimate video.
On 7 September, opposition blogger Khasan Khalitov published a recording of a WhatsApp video call in which Bashirov allegedly showed his genitals to another man. Khalitov wrote on Telegram that he received the recording from an anonymous source, via a Telegram feedback bot.
‘The most disgusting thing in this story is that this old whiner sends this video from a room that is equipped for prayers’, Khalitov wrote on Telegram.
According to the North Caucasus SOS Crisis Group and the NIYSO Telegram channel, following the video’s publication, Bashirov was extorted for money as part of a blackmail scheme.
Khalitov posted screenshots, photos of money transfers, and a screen recording, all purporting to show how Bashirov was blackmailed. Khalitov stated that he again received these items via an anonymous feedback bot.
According to these media files, Bashirov twice transferred ₽250,000 ($2,700) to the anonymous blackmailer. Bashirov also allegedly sent the mobile phone number of the Minister of Press and Information of Chechnya, Akhmed Dudayev.
Later the same day, Khalitov wrote on his Telegram channel that Bashirov had been kidnapped by men employed by Chechen Head Ramzan Kadyrov.
Bashirov has yet to be located, and has not yet appeared at any official work meeting.
On 9 September, Khalitov shared a similar screen recording, this time allegedly showing the head of the rural Bachi-Yurt settlement, Mehdi Batagaev, video calling another man while nude.
According to Khalitov, Batagaev explained the video by claiming that he was pretending to be queer ‘in order to expose and punish another person with a non-traditional orientation’.
As in the case of Bashirov, following the video’s distribution online, reports appeared about Batagaev’s possible kidnapping.
The following day, on 10 September, another video of the same type was distributed, this time featuring Ibragim Bakhaev, who is believed to be close to Ramzan Kadyrov’s family. According to Khalitov, Ibragim was also kidnapped following the video’s publication online.
Queer people face persecution throughout the North Caucasus but especially in Chechnya, where they are systematically kidnapped, tortured, subjected to violence, blackmailed, and killed. In 2017, ‘anti-gay purges’ carried out in Chechnya reportedly resulted in at least 100 people being detained, and several killed.
In more recent years, the practice of detaining suspected queer people and then threatening to use them to identify other queer people has become popularised. A recent case involved Salman Mukayev, who was detained in Chechnya and promised he would be released after he identified other queer men through online dating sites. However, he refused to do so and fled to Armenia, where he was granted asylum.
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