Rights defenders demand to voice out data on Tepsurkaev's fate

A year has passed since the kidnapping of Salman Tepsurkaev, a critic of Chechen authorities, but investigators are still unaware of his whereabouts, the Amnesty International (AI) has stated, calling on to release the details of the inquiry into his kidnapping.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that in September 2020, a video in which a naked Salman Tepsurkaev sat on a bottle, explaining that he was doing that as punishment for cooperation with the Telegram channel "1Adat" that criticized Chechen authorities, received a wide resonance in Chechnya and beyond. Since then, Tepsurkaev never got in touch with his relatives.

The AI, an international human rights organization, has called on the residents of Russia to join the demand for the search for Salman Tepsurkaev. Human rights defenders posted a corresponding appeal on their website on August 18. "The Chechen blogger, Salman Tepsurkaev, disappeared almost a year ago. The only clue is a video of him being tortured. Demand from authorities to find him. <...> Help us to force authorities to efficiently investigate his kidnapping," says the AI's appeal.

The AI has stressed that the fate and whereabouts of Tepsurkaev remain unknown a year after his kidnapping. Below the text with the appeal they placed an example of a similar appeal addressed to the Investigating Department (ID) for Chechnya of the Investigating Committee of the Russian Federation (ICRF) and its boss, Vitaly Volkov. Rights defenders offer anyone, who wishes to find Tepsurkaev, to send an appeal to the ID demanding to make public the inquiry results into his abduction and punish those guilty.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on August 19, 2021 at 08:41 am MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.