On September 26, the police investigation agency of the Troitsko-Novomoskovsky administrative district in Moscow extended the term of the pre-investigation check into the attack by two Muscovites with dogs on a Muslim woman and her children.
The incident occurred late in the evening of August 30 in a park in the Moskovsky settlement in the southeast of Moscow, where, by the way, many people from the Caucasus live. The woman in the hijab was walking with three young children and two nephews. In the same park, two drunk women were walking their dogs - a Rottweiler and a Doberman - according to eyewitnesses. They set the dog on the child, and when the mother pulled the animal away, they threw it to the ground and began kicking it. At the same time, they shouted insults and continued to set the dogs on the children, shouting: "Eat them!" Local residents stood up for the victim, and soon her husband arrived at the scene, locked the inadequate women in a dog walking area and did not let them out until the police arrived, although they threw logs at him over the fence and smashed his face until it bled.
The 8-year-old child was hospitalized with bites in the leg and armpit area, the woman with a torn cruciate ligament and numerous hematomas all over her body. The next day, lawyer Ruslan Nagiyev filed a report with the police, demanding that a case be opened under articles on causing serious bodily harm, hooliganism, and attempted murder.
“The physical and emotional state of the entire family is serious. The woman has a torn cruciate ligament. She only moves with crutches. Not long before the incident, the woman got a job to help her husband, but now she will not be able to work. She will also not be able to take the children to kindergarten and school. She will have to undergo serious knee surgery and a long period of rehabilitation. The boy received medical assistance after being bitten by a dog. He and his sisters suffered psychological trauma. Thanks to the local residents who stood up for the family during the conflict, more serious consequences were avoided,” the lawyer wrote on his Telegram channel. He noted that the victims were not migrants. “These are native Russians, representatives of one of the republics of the North Caucasus. All the necessary documents and materials were provided to the police department. A criminal case should be opened within 10 days.”
A video of the attack was distributed on social networks and caused a great stir among local residents. “These creatures were showing off their relatives to the police. This cannot be forgiven,” one user wrote. However, despite the presence of the video and numerous witnesses, the police did not open a case for two months, extending the pre-investigation check for another 30 days.
Almost at the same time, two more incidents based on religious intolerance occurred in Moscow.
On September 1, one of the metro passengers demanded that a woman in a niqab "take off this clothing and wear normal clothes." Other passengers stood up for the girl, who, by the way, turned out to be Russian. She filmed part of what was happening on her phone camera. The recording shows that a discussion began in the car. "Are you all tolerant? While we are killing Russian boys in the SVO, they are all sitting here," the man said, and another passenger supported him.
Fortunately, the matter was limited to a dispute. Nevertheless, Muslim Elizaveta Baranovskaya contacted the police, her lawyer Aza Aliyeva asked to initiate a criminal case against the man under Articles 148 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation ("violation of the rights to freedom of conscience and religion") and 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation ("incitement of hatred or enmity, as well as humiliation of human dignity"). The men who made the remark to Baranovskaya were found and summoned to the police for questioning, but no case was opened.
Meanwhile, the video was shared on social media and the conflict went beyond the scope of a civilized discussion. The girl and her lawyer were bullied on social media, while Muslim communities called for the men who offended them to be found and punished. “God, I didn’t know that there were so many nationalists and Nazis in my country. I was born in Russia, my parents were born in the USSR, I studied, worked, and gave birth to children in this country. And every day I met people of different faiths on my way, and all these people were tolerant of each other. What happened to you, people?” the lawyer wrote after receiving more than 4,000 comments with curses and threats.
State television couldn’t ignore the hype either: on NTV, the lawyer was called a defender of “various kinds of extremists.” Aza Aliyeva recently transferred to Moscow from the Saratov Region. The reason was pressure from the Federal Penitentiary Service. The agency's employees wrote denunciations of her to the Bar Association because she published stories of prisoners about torture and violations of their rights in the colonies.
Another client of Aza Aliyeva also became a victim of attacks because of her Muslim clothing. On August 31, in Kotelniki, Moscow Region, a girl in a hijab caused displeasure among a local resident. She followed her, filming her on her phone and shouting insults: "Look, a monkey is coming," "I wish you die."
The outcome of the investigations into Aliyeva's statements has not yet been reported.
