On July 4, the Akhmatovsky District Court of Grozny announced the verdict for Zarema Musaeva. The court found her guilty of fraud and violence against a police officer and sentenced her to 5.5 years in a general regime colony. That's exactly what the prosecutor asked for her. Musaeva and her lawyers intend to appeal the verdict.
Musaeva's defense petitioned to postpone the announcement of the verdict due to the attack on her lawyer Alexander Nemov, but the court refused. Read about the attack on lawyer and journalist Elena Milashina, who flew to Grozny for the verdict, on page .....
Zarema Musaeva was detained in January 2022 in Nizhny Novgorod and forcibly brought to Chechnya as a witness in a criminal case of fraud. According to Chechen security forces, which almost no one believes, the woman attacked a police officer and swore obscenely. For this, an administrative and criminal case was opened against her under Article 318 (“Violence against a representative of the authorities”). Zarema Musaeva is the mother of human rights activist Abubakar, blogger Ibragim Yangulbaev and the wife of retired judge Saydi Yangulbaev. All of them were forced to leave the Russian Federation after the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, accused the Yangulbayev family of organizing a terrorist network and supporting terrorism and said that they would face a place “in prison or underground.”
Lawyers from the Team Against Torture, who represent Musaeva’s interests, note many contradictions in her case. For example, some witnesses to Zarema’s “attack” on a police officer were not eyewitnesses to the incident, but recordings from CCTV cameras at the police department were not included in the case. When the expert's version of how the policeman was injured did not coincide with the investigation's version, he was given time to "better prepare to answer the question."
“There is no testimony from uninterested persons that would incriminate Musayeva in the criminal case,” lawyer Alexander Savin emphasized during the debate, commenting on the charges of loan fraud. In addition, the defense stated “the inadmissibility of a number of evidence related to the prosecution, since they were compiled and presented to the court in violation of the criminal procedure law. But the most important thing is that it is not at all clear what exactly Musaeva’s role in this crime was.”
As for the attack on the policeman, there is nothing in the case except contradictory testimony, some of which are inadmissible, and some of which were presented to the court contrary to the law, the lawyer said. “Based on them, it is even impossible to reliably talk about the crime itself, which requires an accurate establishment of the time, place and method of its commission.”
Since her arrest, Musayeva has been in custody, despite her deteriorating health condition. She was diagnosed with insulin-dependent type 2 diabetes, atherosclerotic cardiosclerosis, arterial hypertension and other diseases. Since mid-May, the woman began to experience frequent and prolonged nosebleeds. From July 31 to August 14, she underwent examination and planned comprehensive treatment at the Republican Clinical Hospital, after which she was again placed in a pre-trial detention center, where she is awaiting an appeal hearing.