Better to go to prison than to his homeland / Mansur Movlaev asked the Kyrgyz court not to deport him to Russia

On October 31, Mansur Movlaev, who fled from Chechnya to Kyrgyzstan, said that he was being tortured in a Bishkek pretrial detention center. The statement was made in the courtroom, where his appeal against the verdict of deportation from the country was to be considered. The hearing was postponed, the message was sent to the National Center of Kyrgyzstan for the Prevention of Torture.

Mansur Movlaev was born in 1995 in the Chechen village of Starye Atagi, graduated from the Grozny Oil University, worked as an engineer at JSC Chechenenergo, practiced taekwondo, and was a prize-winner of all-Russian and international tournaments. In 2020, a court in Chechnya sentenced him to 3 years in prison on charges of drug trafficking. According to the Russian website VC.RU, the case was fabricated, the real reason for Movlaev's persecution is his "political and religious considerations" and "criticism of the Chechen authorities." It is not reported where he made his criticism.

Movlaev was released on parole in 2022, but was soon kidnapped by officers of the Shali District Department of Internal Affairs and placed in a secret prison. He managed to escape and illegally, without documents, leave the country. It was after his escape that he was put on the federal and then international wanted list for extremism.

According to information from the State Committee for National Security (GKNB) of Kyrgyzstan, Movlaev illegally crossed the state border of Kyrgyzstan in January 2023 and used a fake Russian passport on the country's territory.

On August 20, 2023, he was detained in Kyrgyzstan as part of "counter-terrorism activities to counter sleeper cells of an international terrorist organization." Kyrgyz special services reported that he is a "follower of radical ideology" and "on the instructions of emissaries of international terrorist organizations in Syria, he was part of a sleeper cell of previously convicted followers of the terrorist underground on the territory of the Kyrgyz Republic." According to the State Committee for National Security, members of this cell "were planning to commit a series of armed robberies against wealthy citizens of the Kyrgyz Republic with the aim of subsequently financing international terrorist organizations."

On August 21, the Pervomaisky District Court of Bishkek chose a preventive measure for him in the form of detention in a pretrial detention center until October 21.

Immediately after Movlaev's arrest, brothers Ibragim and Baysangur Yangulbaev released a video about him on the YouTube channel of the 1ADAT movement. They said that he criticized the Chechen authorities, fled to Kazakhstan, from there moved to Kyrgyzstan and planned to fly from Manas Airport to Turkey, then move to Europe and seek asylum.

1ADAT expressed concern that if Movlaev is deported from Kyrgyzstan and returned to Chechnya, he will be dealt with there.
With the help of lawyers, Movlaev applied to the Ministry of Labor, Social Security and Migration of Kyrgyzstan with a request to grant him temporary refugee status. The Ministry sent a request to the State Committee for National Security to allow them access to Movlaev to process official documents.

On October 4, the Pervomaisky Court of Bishkek considered the case of Mansur Movlaev for illegally crossing the border and sentenced him to 6 months in prison with subsequent deportation from the country, where exactly is not specified. He was not charged with participating in a terrorist cell. The criminal article on border violation does not fall into the category of serious ones and provides for punishment from a fine to two years in prison. The defense insisted on a real term. "I am ready to serve the maximum that is provided for under this article. "I am ready to go to prison here for at least ten years to save my life," the defendant said in his final statement.

The verdict did not satisfy either side: the prosecutor demanded an increase in the prison term, while the defense asked for the decision on deportation to be reviewed. On October 31, the Bishkek City Court was supposed to hold a hearing of the appellate instance, but it was interrupted by the chairman of the panel of judges after the defendant stated that he had been beaten in the pretrial detention center, forcing him to withdraw from the trial. The judge said that not all the necessary documents had been submitted to the court, so the hearing was postponed until November 16.

Movlaev's lawyer Bakyt Avtandil told journalists that the statement about the beating in the pretrial detention center had been sent to the National Center for the Prevention of Torture. The defense attorney also said that all information about the charges against him, the persecution and torture he had been subjected to in Chechnya had been "literally erased" from Movlaev's case materials. All this is done to legitimize Movlaev's expulsion to Russia. Although the court's verdict does not specify where exactly the convicted person should be deported, the expulsion is handled by the State Committee for National Security, and it can choose the country at its own discretion. Given the connections between the countries' intelligence services, there is a risk that Movlaev will be sent back to Russia.

The case of Movlaev demonstrates that civil activists from Russia should not choose Kyrgyzstan for relocation. As Dmitry Kabak, a legal expert from Kyrgyzstan, told the publication "Caucasian Knot", there have been many news stories recently about Russians being detained in Kyrgyzstan under various pretexts. "Someone - "for violating the registration procedure". It seems that the registration was at one address, but the person lived at another. Someone was detained at the request of the Russian authorities and placed in a pretrial detention center for subsequent transfer," D. Kabak noted.

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