Chechen opposition blogger Tumso Abdurakhmanov added to the register of foreign agents

Yesterday, the Russian Ministry of Justice added to the list of foreign agents. Its new defendants were Chechen opposition blogger Tumso Abdurakhmanov, journalist of the independent Russian online publication Mediazona Dmitry Treshchanin, stand-up comedian Denis Chuzhoy, who spoke out against the war, and the online publication about life in the regions Govorit NeMoskva.

In June 2021, Rosfinmonitoring included Tumso Abdurakhmanov in the list of extremists. According to Abdurakhmanov himself, the reason for this was a criminal case under the article on public calls for terrorist activity or justification of terrorism (205.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), initiated in September 2020.

Tumso Abdurakhmanov is an opposition blogger and one of the most famous critics of the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov. In his videos, he covers human rights violations in Chechnya and other abuses by local authorities, and talks with opposition activists in the republic and opponents of the Kadyrov regime.

In 2015, after being illegally detained and in a conflict with a relative of Kadyrov, Abdurakhmanov left the Russian Federation, and in 2021, he received political asylum in Sweden. In February 2020, the blogger was the subject of an assassination attempt in his apartment. He managed to disarm the criminal and call the police.

In January, a court in Sweden sentenced two men accused of attempting to murder Tumso Abdurakhmanov to 8 and 10 years in prison. The convicted are Russian citizens. The specific people who ordered the crime have not been identified, but the prosecutor stated in court that “the evidence points to Grozny.” Tumso himself accused the pro-Russian leadership of Chechnya of the attack.

On December 1, 2023, a message appeared on the Internet about the murder of Tumso Abdurakhmanov, but there was no official confirmation from the Swedish police or his relatives. On December 5, the Telegram channel 1ADAT (recognized as extremist in Russia) announced that, according to their information, Tumso Abdurakhmanov was killed, and his brother Muhammad was hidden by the police for security reasons. On December 8, the director of the Grozny State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company Chingiz Akhmedov accused the head of the Ichkerian government in exile Akhmed Zakayev of Tumso's murder. The next day, information appeared that the blogger was alive and testifying in Munich in court in the case of the assassination attempt on his younger brother Muhammad Abdurakhmanov.

Returning to the public eye three months later, Tumso did not explain his disappearance in any way. Ibragim Yangulbaev did it for him on the 1ADAT channel. According to him, Abdurakhmanov and another Chechen oppositionist, Khalid Khalitov, who lives in Turkey, participated in deceiving Kadyrov. He allegedly ordered their murder, and the perpetrators, together with an intermediary, a certain Bashir Albogachiev from Ingushetia, decided that it would be better to share part of the "fee" with the victims and stage the murder than to actually commit these crimes. In support of this version, Ibragim Yangulbaev published voice messages that Albogachiev exchanged with Khalitov and Abdurakhmanov. From the recordings it follows that Khalitov received $600,000 from Albogachiev for a video from a Turkish prison, where he was allegedly poisoned. Abdurakhmanov, in turn, received $1.1 million for a video of the shooting near the garbage bins where he was "killed" and his subsequent disappearance from the air. In addition, Ibragim Yangulbaev admitted that he himself received $50,000 from Kadyrov’s intermediary for confirming false information about the murder of Tumso Abdurakhmanov, although he knew about the scam.