Tatyana Moskalkova and Ziyad Sabsabi meet the children returned from Iraq (ombudsmanrf.org)
A chartered plane from Iraq landed in Moscow on October 11, with five children from Chechnya and Dagestan on board. The children’s parents had joined up to fight for the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq several years ago.
The children were accompanied by Ziyad Sabsabi, Presidential Plenipotentiary for Chechnya. They were met in the airport by Children’s Rights Commissioner Anna Kuznetsova and Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova.
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said on his Instagram page that three Chechen brothers and two Dagestani sisters had returned to Russia.
‘The boys are between four and six years old. The children’s father was killed, and the mother, along with her four-month-old girl, is in prison in Iraq. We are taking measures to liberate her [the child]’, Kadyrov wrote.
As for the two girls, one is four months and the other about three years old. Their parents are dead.
Upon arriving in Moscow, the children were examined by doctors. Kuznetsova said they would need psychological rehabilitation. According to of the Office of the Children’s Rights Commissioner, 445 children from Russia are now in Iraq and Syria.
Daghestan’s commissioner for children’s rights, Marina Yezhova, told OC Media the exact number of children in the warzone is difficult to determine.
‘There is an official figure, but it is approximate. We only know about those who were taken away from here. But we don’t know how many were born there. Therefore, the official figure could be multiplied by three’, she said.
Over the past two months, four women and 16 children from Russia and Kazakhstan have been returned from Syria and Iraq.
The head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, has publicly accused three Russian lawmakers — Daghestani Federation Council Senator Suleiman Kerimov, as well as State Duma MPs Bekkhan Barakhoev and Rizvan Kurbanov — of plotting to assassinate him and threatened to declare a blood feud against them.
At a meeting with Chechnya’s commanders and security forces leaders on 9 October, Kadyrov, speaking in Chechen, reportedly claimed to have information about a contract on his life. He warned that if the thre
A man who set fire to a Quran and was subsequently beaten up by Adam Kadyrov while in detention in Chechnya has been charged with high treason for allegedly sharing information with Ukrainian security services.
The Volgograd Prosecutor’s Office approved the charges against 20-year-old Nikita Zhuravel on Thursday. He faces up to life in prison if convicted.
Zhuravel gained public attention after footage purportedly of him burning a Quran appeared on social media. He was arrested and later
The Mufti of Chechnya and known advisor to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, Salakh Mezhiev, has been elected chair of the Coordination Centre of Muslims of the North Caucasus.
On 28 September, the Council of Muftis unanimously elected Mezhiyev during a meeting in Cherkessk, the capital city of Karachay–Cherkessia.
‘I congratulate the respected Sheikh Salakh-Khadzhi Mezhiev on his election to this post. I am confident that he will justify the high trust placed in him by religious leaders o
Exiled from their republic due to threats to their lives, Chechen activists in the West navigate a difficult balance between visibility and caution, facing erasure by both Russian and Western society. However, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine might offer Chechnya and its activists a shift in the tides.
‘Ukraine’s incredible incursion into the Kursk region made me finally believe that Russia could soon be defeated’. This is what Ali Bakaev, a Chechen online activist who now lives in London tells m
A chartered plane from Iraq landed in Moscow on October 11, with five children from Chechnya and Dagestan on board. The children’s parents had joined up to fight for the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq several years ago.
