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13 NOV 2024
The black hole for prisoners: Alavdi Batykaev and the situation in SIZO-2 in Taganrog
13 NOV 2024
In September 2024, the Rostov District Military Court sentenced 64-year-old Alavdi Batykaev to 16 years of imprisonment under charges of attacking a company of Pskov paratroopers in February 2000. While Batykaev was waiting for appeal, he was suddenly transferred from SIZO-1 in Rostov-on-Don to SIZO-2 in Taganrog. The same has happened to several other North Caucasus natives. We have repeatedly written about this to the SIZO — men transferred there are isolated from lawyers, relatives, members of the Public Monitoring Commission. There are strong reasons to believe that their rights are being grossly violated and new criminal cases are being fabricated against them.
Оглавление
Batykaev case: charges and sentence
According to the prosecution, on 29 February 2000, Alavdi Batykaev, a member of a joint unit under the general command of Shamil Basayev and Khattab, allegedly participated in an attack on soldiers of the sixth paratrooper company of the 104th regiment of the 76th Pskov airborne division.
At that time, 84 of the 90 soldiers were killed near Ulus-Kert village in Vedensky district of Chechnya, and four others were injured of varying severity. The Main Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of Russia initiated criminal proceedings against Batykaev on articles of banditry (art. 209, part 2 of the Criminal Code), armed rebellion (art. 279 of the Criminal Code) and assaulting a police officer (art. 317 of the Criminal Code). His trial began in August 2023 at the Rostov District Military Court.
From the beginning, the man insisted on his innocence, the defense claimed falsifications, the charges were built on dubious evidence and testimony of secret witnesses. The Memorial Centre also believes that he is accused unreasonably. Cases about these events are «put on stream», politically motivated. They are being investigated by the same investigation team, and the indictments are very similar.
However, the court in Rostov-on-Don found Batykaev guilty and sentenced him to 16 years of imprisonment.
Read more about the case of Pskov paratroopers in the Stories of the Memorial Centre.
Transfer to SIZO-2 in Taganrog and denial of the right to defence
After filing the appeal, Batykaev remained in SIZO-1 in Rostov-on-Don, awaiting its consideration.
However, on 18 October 2024 for unknown reasons he was suddenly transferred to SIZO-2 in Taganrog. On 6 November, the lawyer arrived to discuss the appeal. However, he was not allowed to see the defendant. The employee was given a note, allegedly from Batykaev. It was written that he «refuses to meet with the lawyer for personal reasons». For two years of cooperation, Batykaev had no claims to his lawyer, there were no disputes between them, they extended the agreement on appeal and prepared for it.
The situation with Magomed Alkhanov: a common scenario
The same story happened with other prisoners who were transferred from Rostov-on-Don to Taganrog. Among them was also convicted in a similar case on the Pskov paratroopers - Magomed Alkhanov. The same court in Rostov sentenced him in September 2024 to 10 years of imprisonment. He was also transferred to SIZO-2 in Taganrog before the sentence, and his lawyer faced repeated refusals in meetings with the client. Later it became known that he and other natives of the North Caucasus who had been transferred in recent months to Taganrog were forced to confess complicity in an attempt to escape and capture hostages in SIZO-1 in Rostov-on-Don on June 16, 2024 and «tell», which of the SIZO’s employees helped them to organize the escape.
All the prisoners had previously stated that they were not involved in the incident and had not even left their cell on the day of the escape. But when they were in the Taganrog detention centre, they gave a confession.
According to the information available to us, on November 6, Alkhanov’s lawyer once again tried unsuccessfully to meet with him to work out the position of the defense in the appellate instance.
According to human rights defenders, such refusals may be related to the situation when prisoners are pressured in order to obtain confessions.
Comment of the employee of the Memorial Centre
«The SIZO in Taganrog turned into an impregnable fortress. Most of the Muslim prisoners are sent there after sentencing in the Rostov District Military Court. They are not accessible, they are lost to the outside world, their relatives and lawyers have almost no opportunity to communicate with them. We cannot find out what conditions are in and what happens to the prisoners. Such isolation is already a gross violation of the law. The information we have received about possible violations of their rights is very disturbing.
The prosecutor’s office, which conducted inspections after the publication of the Memorial Centre on violence against detainees, found no reason to react. Unfortunately, we did not expect other actions from the Russian prosecutor’s office, even though there was hope».
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