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).
Residents of Makhachkala Magomed Ubaidulaev and Murat Aligadzhiev were fined 15,000 rubles each. Their defense managed to reclassify the criminal case for participation in the September protests against mobilization for the war with Ukraine.
Both men were accused of using violence against a government official (Part 2 of Article 318 of the Criminal Code of Russia). Later, the charge was mitigated to deliberate infliction of minor bodily harm out of hooligan motives (paragraph “a” of Part 2 of Article 115 of the Criminal Code of Russia). Until March, the accused were kept in a pre-trial detention center.
The investigation claimed that Ubaidulaev and Aligadzhiev inflicted multiple blows on the policeman. However, the defendants themselves reported that on September 25, 2022, during a rally near the Dagestan puppet theater, they heard the cry of a girl who pointed to a man who grabbed her phone. The men took the phone and returned it to the girl. Later it turned out that the kidnapper was a police officer in civilian clothes.