Diksia.com - A Russian journalist, Yelena Milashina, was killed by an armed group Tuesday afternoon (07/04/2023) while visiting the Chechen Republic, part of the Russian Federation.
Yelena Milashina was accompanied by a lawyer, Alexander Nemov, during a visit to the Chechen city of Grozny to attend the trial of the mother of a Chechen activist.
The two were intercepted by a group of armed men on their way from the airport.
They threatened to shoot Yelena Milashina, who worked for Russian media Novaya Gazeta.
“You have been warned. Get out of here and don’t write anything,” said the Russian human rights group Memorial and Crew Against Torture (CAT), citing threats from the attackers.
The attackers also confiscated and destroyed the mobile phones of Yelena Milashina and Alexander Nemov.
CAT said the shooter shaved Yelena Milashina’s hair.
They also colored Yelena Milashina’s face with green paint.
Yelena Milashina and Alexander Nemov believe the attackers have been targeting them since they were at the airport.
“It’s a classic kidnapping,” Yelena Milashina told CAT’s head, Sergei Babinets, at a Grozny hospital, quoted by BBC International.
Alexander Nemov said the attacker forced her out of the car.
“They opened fire and then threw our driver out of the car, got up, lowered his head, tied my hands, forced me to kneel and put a gun to my head,” he continued.
“They threw us to the side of the road and started kicking us in the face and all over the body. They stabbed me in the leg,” Alexander Nemov was quoted as saying by the Russian Bar Association.
Yelena Milashina also said that after they were dragged into the gorge, the attackers started hitting them with polypropylene plastic pipes.
The attacker demands that he unlock his phone.
He explained that the password was too complicated to be hacked.
“They didn’t get it, and when they finally got it, they had already shaved me and doused me with green paint, and I didn’t see anything,” he told CAT chief Sergei Babinets.
The dye is widely used as an antiseptic and has been used in previous attacks against dissidents in Russia, including Alexei Navalny.
The situation of Yelena Milashina and Alexander Nemov
CAT head Sergei Babinets published a photo of Yelena Milashina in a phone call with Russian Human Rights Commissioner Tatiana Moskalkova.
Yelena Milashina’s hand looks bandaged.
His head was almost bald from the hair the attacker had shaved off.
He also had some bruises on his face smeared with green paint, the Moscow Times reported.
He suffered a brain injury from the beating and was initially diagnosed with three broken fingers, although doctors later said they were intact.
Yelena Milashina is being treated in a hospital in the city of Beslan in the North Caucasian Republic by order of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov.
Meanwhile, Alexander Nemov was also seriously injured and CAT published a photo showing a stab wound to his leg.
“We have instructed the responsible services to make every effort to identify the attackers,” Ramzan Kadyrov said on Tuesday afternoon (04.07.2023) in his official telegram.
“The authorities started work immediately after the incident was reported,” he continued.
previous attack
Earlier, Yelena Milashina was attacked along with other lawyers in February 2020 in the city of Grozny.
In this attack, Yelena Milashina was with the lawyer Alexander Nemov.
Alexander Nemov represented his client Zarema Musaeva, wife of a retired federal judge and mother of human rights lawyer and activist Abubakar Yangulbaev.
Zarema Musaeva faces up to 5.5 years in prison for fraud and assaulting the authorities.
