Arson attack on office of Joint Mobile Group
On 14 December 2014, at approximately 1pm, several armed men entered the apartment of the Joint Mobile Group (JMG) in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya. The apartment is located next to their office, which was badly damaged in an arson attack the previous day. The armed men refused to identify themselves but later said that they were from Leninsky district police department in Grozny. They forcibly searched the premises and two members of JMG, Mr Sergey Babinets and Mr Dmitry Dmitriev, were held in the apartment.
Igor Kalyapin is the chairperson of the Interregional Committee Against Torture, and founder and President of the Joint Mobile Group (JMG), which was established by human rights NGOs in November 2009 following the murder of human rights defender Ms Natalya Estemirova in Chechnya. The JMG received the Front Line Defenders Award in April 2011 for their work in investigating torture and disappearances in Chechnya and was also the 2013 recipient of the Martin Ennals Award. Igor Kalyapin is also a member of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights in Russia.
On 14 December 2014, at approximately 1pm, several armed men entered the apartment of the Joint Mobile Group (JMG) in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya. The apartment is located next to their office, which was badly damaged in an arson attack the previous day. The armed men refused to identify themselves but later said that they were from Leninsky district police department in Grozny. They forcibly searched the premises and two members of JMG, Mr Sergey Babinets and Mr Dmitry Dmitriev, were held in the apartment.
The alleged police officers did not have a warrant to search the premises and provided no explanations, except to point out that Sergey Babinets is suspicious “because he has a beard.” The policemen seized the human rights defenders' mobile phones and they had no means of contact and no access to legal representation for an hour and a half. Two computers and CCTV cameras were also seized. At approximately 2:30pm the human rights defenders were released.
The previous day, on 13 December 2014, three unidentified armed men tried to enter the JMG office in Grozny. This followed a demonstration that morning calling for the ban of JMG in Chechnya. It was allegedly organised with support from the authorities. Later that day, the armed men in plain clothes tried to enter the JMG office on two occasion and members of JMG were followed as they drove away. In the evening, Vice-Minister of the Interior and head of police of Chechnya, Mr Apti Alaudinov, went to the hotel where members of JMG, Dmitry Dmitriev and Sergey Babinets, were staying. He accused them of spreading false information about previous threats against them. At approximately 8:30pm, the JMG office was set on fire.
On 11 December 2014, two unidentified individuals attacked human rights defender Igor Kalyapin by throwing eggs at him during a press conference in Moscow that was highlighting the recent “collective punishment” incidents in Chechnya, where relatives of alleged insurgents had their houses burnt and demolished. During the conference, two unidentified men stood up, stated that “Ramzan Kadyrov is a hero of Russia” and threw eggs at Igor Kalyapin, accusing the human rights defender of “defending criminals”. The organisers of the press conference called the police and, when they arrived, Igor Kalyapin filed a complaint. The previous day, on 10 December 2014, the head of the Chechen Republic, Mr Ramzan Kadyrov, had given an interview to local Chechen TV channel Grozny in which he appeared to accuse Igor Kalyapin of being a traitor and of financing the insurgency. He also published threats against Igor Kalyapin on his Instagram account stating that: “Kalyapin defends criminals and their relatives....The police have information that funding from western secret services...was transferred to the insurgents by a person with the surname Kalyapin...I will not allow anybody... assist criminals”. human rights defenders held a press conference in Moscow in which they discussed the “collective punishment” and the recent statement by the head of Chechnya.
On 9 December 2014, Igor Kalyapin had filed a complaint addressed to the General Prosecutor and the Head of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation asking them to investigate the recent statements by the Head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, who had announced publicly that “if the insurgents murder a policeman or any other person, the family of the insurgents will be immediately expelled from Chechnya and not allowed to return, and their house will be razed to the ground”. This statement was issued in response to an attack by insurgents in Grozny on 4 December 2014, when fourteen policemen were killed and more than thirty injured after armed clashes. As Human Rights Centre “Memorial” reported, since 6 December 2014, law enforcement officers have allegedly burnt at least six houses in Chechnya as part of this “collective punishment”.
As Igor Kalyapin stated in his complaint, the collective punishment of insurgents' relatives is in contravention of Russian legislation. According to the law, the authorities may seize the property of the perpetrator's relatives as compensation for a terrorist attack, but only in the case that it is proved in court that the property came into their possession as a result of these illegal activities.
