A criminal case against Khamidulla Yapov, accused of participating in a unit led by field commanders Shamil Basayev and Khattab during the Second Russo-Chechen War, has been referred to the Southern District Military Court.
Investigators allege that in 1999, Yapov joined an armed group and participated in an attack on Russian servicemen. The attack, which took place on October 4 in the village of Chervlennaya in the Shelkovsky District of Chechnya, killed 15 people.
Earlier, in 2010, Yapov was arrested and convicted by the Supreme Court of Chechnya for an attack on Pskov paratroopers in 2000, receiving a 14-year prison sentence. He was released from a maximum-security prison colony in December 2024.
Human rights activists believe that criminal cases against participants in the Russian-Chechen wars are inherently biased. Typically, prosecution witnesses are secret individuals, often the same ones. Sometimes, as human rights activists note, individuals serving sentences in prisons who have never met the accused are forced to confess under pressure and the threat of torture.
