Elena Patyaeva—a friend of Seda Suleymanova, who disappeared three years ago after being forcibly returned from St. Petersburg to Chechnya—was detained in Grozny. On August 23, Patyaeva stood by the monument to journalists who died for freedom of speech, holding a sign that read: "I demand an investigation into the murder of Seda Suleymanova." This was reported by the human rights project "Slovo Zashchite" (Word for the Defense).
The Supreme Court of Dagestan upheld the verdict of three ex-employees of the republican Federal Penitentiary Service, who were found guilty of official crimes in February of this year.
Let us recall that on February 7, 2023, the Kirovsky District Court of Makhachkala sentenced the former head of pre-trial detention center No. 1 Daud Davydov to 8 years in a general regime colony, and his subordinates Makhach Vakilov and Abdulla Mirzaev to 5.5 years. According to investigators, in 2015-2019, the defendants were involved in extorting money from prisoners and beating or threatening them if they refused to pay.
Thus, Davydov, together with his subordinates, tortured a man sitting in a pre-trial detention center and forced him to re-register a plot of land, buildings and an apartment worth more than 5 million rubles. Also, the head of the detention center received a bribe of 150 thousand rubles from the prisoner’s wife, and 300 thousand rubles from the prisoner for improving conditions of detention.