Aishat Khizrieva remains in danger after an attempted kidnapping

Aishat Khizrieva fled Chechnya due to domestic violence and did not seek evacuation assistance. An attempt to return her to her family may be repeated, and nothing is known about the police's actual actions to protect the girl, human rights activists stated.

As reported by the "Caucasian Knot," Aishat Khizrieva, a native of Chechnya who was attempted to be kidnapped by unknown individuals in Novosibirsk, left the police station. She filed a report of stalking and attempted kidnapping. Aishat said that the people who attempted to kidnap her accused her of theft, and her friends, with whom she was with, accused her of kidnapping. Aishat went to the police to file a report, but contact with her was lost. She stated that she was in danger within her family.

The reasons for Aishat Khizrieva's escape from her family are "a fairly standard story, like almost every Caucasian fugitive," Alexandra Miroshnikova, press secretary for the SK SOS Crisis Group (the organization is listed as a foreign agent), told a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent. "This is domestic violence and some restrictions on freedom of movement and other things," she said.

Miroshnikova noted that Aishat Khizrieva fled Chechnya on her own. "As far as we know, no human rights organizations evacuated her. She left home around the end of March or beginning of April. Her friends didn't help her, meaning she fled on her own and only contacted her friends after the fact, after her escape," she said.

Unknown individuals attempted to detain Khizrieva at a gas station while she was already in a taxi with friends. It's not yet clear whether the girl was discovered due to some safety violation or if it was simply unavoidable.

"You have to understand that if someone is from an influential family, if they have connections in law enforcement, they can change phones, SIM cards, and plan their route as much as they want. "As soon as you start living a relatively independent life, going outside, showing up on any cameras, you can be found. I'm not sure, however, that this is exactly the kind of story I'm talking about, since the people who identified themselves as police officers didn't seem to want to talk to their "colleagues" from the Novosibirsk police. And when the Novosibirsk police looked at Aishat's wanted list, they were convinced there was no search, no reports of the theft of 4 million rubles, no kidnapping, no missing persons, and so on—nothing. Therefore, it's unlikely that this was a law enforcement search; it was more likely that these were private individuals trying to help her family get their child back," she believes.

The risks for the girl remain very high. "Just because there are theft cases doesn't mean they won't surface later." Plus, the fact that some private individuals (of course, there's a chance they really were law enforcement officers, but they didn't identify themselves, didn't show any documents, and behaved rather strangely for law enforcement) stopped a taxi at a gas station, wouldn't let it leave, behaved provocatively and rudely, and felt complete impunity—that is, they had no idea their behavior could lead to any kind of liability—is quite alarming. They feel like they won't face any consequences. So what's stopping them from stopping her car next time, somewhere in Tver, Omsk, Izhevsk, I don't know, any Russian city, or stopping her on the street, dragging her into a car, and taking her back to Chechnya, if no one is doing anything about it? The police, yes, took a report, but haven't tried to contact her since. "And, as far as we know, there haven't been any arrests yet, at least we haven't heard anything about it," Miroshnikova pointed out.

Essentially, the statement being issued doesn't mean these people will be detained or that they will face any appropriate consequences, she believes. "They might say, yes, we stopped at a gas station, tried to talk to the girl, but it didn't work out, so we left." "The police will shrug and say, 'Okay, we tried to talk, good job, that's it, case closed,'" Miroshnikova stated.

Khizrieva has a lawyer; she hired him herself. "We're not in touch with him, we don't have his contact information. She contacted the lawyer herself, she's communicating with him herself," Alexandra Miroshnikova concluded.

A reader of the "Caucasian Knot" also suggested that Khizrieva's relatives are connected to the Chechen authorities. "One would think that Aishat's father or one of her close relatives is not an ordinary resident of Chechnya. The Khizriev family name is quite well-known in the republic. For example, Kadyrov's fellow villager, Zaur Khizriev, is the mayor of Grozny. The Khizriev family is also represented in Chechnya's security forces. For example, Police Colonel Aslan Khizriev, known as "Tornado," heads one of the Chechen riot police. A judge with the same last name and first name works in the Sheikh-Mansurovsky District Court of Grozny. Considering that Chechen security forces (real or imaginary) attempted to kidnap Aishat Khizrieva in Novosibirsk, and that they called her father during the attempt, it can be assumed that her father or one of his close relatives holds a high position in Chechnya,” wrote pat_koelpin, recalling that the father of Aishat Baimuradova, who was killed in Yerevan, had ties to the Chechen security forces, and that her family had some distant ties to the family of the head of Chechnya.

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Human rights activists have recorded a surge in requests for help in the North Caucasus

The problem of domestic violence in Dagestan, Ingushetia, and Chechnya affects women of all ages, but it is primarily young women under 30 who try to escape, human rights activists from the Ad Rem team noted in their report. The problem of evacuating victims of domestic violence is most acute in these regions, since authorities and security forces there side with domestic abusers.

In June 2023, the BBC released a documentary, "When I Escaped," about girls from the North Caucasus who managed to escape the control of their families. For victims of domestic violence, escape often becomes href="https://www.kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/389738">the only chance to save their lives, human rights activists emphasized.

Women whose behavior their relatives consider a disgrace to their family can become victims of "honor killings" in the Caucasus. Such murders are committed by relatives themselves, most often a father or brother, according to the "Caucasian Knot" report "Honor Killings" in the North Caucasus. According to human rights activists, Seda Suleimanova, a native of Chechnya, fell victim to such a crime. In August 2023, she was detained in St. Petersburg and taken against her will to live with relatives in Chechnya. In April 2024, it became known that the Investigative Committee was investigating the girl's disappearance under the article on murder, according to the "Caucasian Knot" report "The Abduction of Seda Suleimanova".

Several years after Suleimanova's abduction, Seda's friend Lena Patyaeva continues to push for an investigation. Patyaeva became the main initiator of the "Where is Seda?" campaign. She writes appeals to government agencies and holds solo pickets, which is why she faces detentions and arrests.