On January 26, the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don ordered an additional psychological and linguistic examination of the publications of Dagestani journalist Abdulmumin Gadzhiev, accused of financing terrorism.
The court did this at the request of the state prosecutor after the previous examination did not find anything criminal in Gadzhiev’s texts and thereby refuted the prosecution’s arguments.
Let us remind you: the trial of Abdulmumin Gadzhiev has been ongoing since November 2020. Together with him in the dock are programmer Kemal Tambiev and the head of the Ansar charity foundation, Abubakar Rizvanov. According to the indictment, all of them are accomplices of the wanted Dagestani preacher Israil Akhmednabiev (Abu Umar Sasitlinsky), through publications in the Chernovik newspaper, under the pretext of building mosques and helping poor Muslims, they collected donations and sent 68 million rubles and 200 one thousand dollars. Six months ago, Sasitlinsky’s brother Saadu Akhmednabiev, also accused of financing terrorism, was sentenced to 16 years in prison.
The first expert opinion in the case of Gadzhiev, Tambiev and Rizvanov was announced at the court hearing on January 11. The study was conducted by the Southern Center for Forensic Science of the Ministry of Justice of Russia; its employees studied 26 publications by Gadzhiev in “Chernovik” in search of signs of extremism, justification of terrorism, coercion to contribute funds to a charitable foundation, calls for changing the constitutional system and overthrowing authorities, inciting hostility towards law enforcement officials bodies, propaganda of “ideas of the superiority of Sharia” and the ideas of Islamist organizations recognized as terrorist in Russia, inducement to join them. No linguistic or psychological signs of such calls were found in the articles.
The prosecutor invited the head of the expert group to the next court hearing to interrogate him and resolve any ambiguities that had arisen. The witness confirmed the conclusions of the examination, and when asked by the state prosecutor whether Gadzhiev covered the activities of Israil Akhmednabiev “in order to influence Muslims and encourage them to donate money to the preacher’s fund,” he explained that such questions were not put to the experts. This served as the basis for ordering a new psychological and linguistic examination.
According to the defense, the participants in the trial were once again convinced of the inconsistency of the prosecution's arguments. Previously, a number of witnesses recanted their testimony against the defendants, and the so-called classified witnesses were unable to answer questions asked by the defense.
The Memorial human rights center declared Hajiyev a political prisoner, and the international human rights organization Amnesty International recognized him as a prisoner of conscience. Reporters Without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Watch, former head of the Human Rights Council under the President of Russia Mikhail Fedotov, Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova, and the Union of Journalists of Russia also spoke out in support of the journalist.
Gadzhiev’s relatives and his colleagues from Chernovik have been holding weekly single pickets in Makhachkala for more than three years demanding an end to the unfounded persecution and the release of the journalist. Often these pickets end in conflicts with the police, who take away the posters and take the protesters to the district police station.
Thus, on January 16, police officers interrupted a picket led by journalist Magomed Magomedov. A week earlier, activists were taken to the department under the pretext of checking information about an impending terrorist attack near the New Year tree in the central square of Makhachkala.
Despite the arrest, Abdulmumin Gadzhiev continued to work at Chernovik, publishing essays about his cellmates. After he was transferred to Rostov-on-Don, where the trial was taking place, communication with the editorial office was interrupted. The newspaper itself has now ceased to be published in a printed version - printing houses, under pressure from the authorities, refused to print its circulation. The editorial office was evicted from the premises it occupied. The publication is published only in electronic form.