Human rights defender Kalyapin considers it useless to respond to Kadyrov’s accusation

It is useless to complain about Ramzan Kadyrov’s allegation that Igor Kalyapin, the head of the “Committee against Torture”*, is an accomplice of terrorists, since the leader of Chechnya always get away with it, the human rights defender explains.

The “Caucasian Knot” has reported that when commenting on the kidnapping of a mother of Abubakar Yangulbaev, a lawyer of the “Committee against Torture”*, Ramzan Kadyrov ranked NGO head Igor Kalyapin and Elena Milashina, a journalist of the newspaper “Novaya Gazeta”, among terrorists’ accomplices.

Igor Kalyapin said that he would not take any security measures after the allegation voiced by the leader of Chechnya. “He doesn’t watch what he says and very often voices inappropriate things,” said Igor Kalyapin as quoted by the publication “Podyom”.

Ramzan Kadyrov’s allegation will not affect the activities of the “Committee against Torture”*, Igor Kalyapin emphasizes. He also recalled that the leader of Chechnya had already declared him a terrorist in 2014.

Journalist Elena Milashina, mentioned by Ramzan Kadyrov, posted investigations in the newspaper “Novaya Gazeta” about human rights violations in Chechnya and received threats from supporters of the republic's authorities.

* The “Committee against Torture” (CaT) was included by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) of Russia in the register of NCOs-foreign agents in 2015. In this regard, leaders liquidated the organization and created a new legal entity: the “Committee for the Prevention of Torture”, which was also included in the list of foreign agents, and the organization was closed. At present, the “Committee against Torture” operates as an unregistered public association.