Arrest in Chechnya Reflects Effort to Drive Out Dissidents, Activists Say
The State Department on Wednesday called for the immediate release of Mr. Titiev, saying his detention was "the latest in a string of reports of alarming recent human rights violations in Chechnya." Nils Muiznieks, the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, said
that Mr. Titiev had made an "invaluable contribution over many years" and that the case was based on "dubious charges that lack credibility." Chechnya, in the North Caucasus, is run by the strongman Ramzan Kadyrov.
Tanya Lokshina, the Russia program director for Human Rights Watch, said in a statement
that fabricated drug charges were being used by the authorities to rid Chechnya of people who question Mr. Kadyrov’s rule.
The activist, Oyub Titiev, 60, has run the Chechen branch of the Memorial Human Rights Center since the 2009 abduction
and murder of another activist, Natalya Estemirova, a case that remains unsolved.
In 2014, Ruslan Kutaev, a politician and activist, was sentenced to four years in prison on heroin possession charges after disobeying Mr. Kadyrov’s orders not to hold a conference marking the 70th anniversary of the deportation of Chechen
and Ingush people under the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
10, 2018
MOSCOW — A human-rights activist in Chechnya has been detained by the police on drug possession charges in a case
that colleagues and international observers say is part of a concerted effort to drive dissidents out of the Russian republic.
Chechnya’s Ministry of Internal Affairs reported on its website
that the police found a plastic bag with what it said the police suspected was marijuana weighing about 180 grams when they stopped Mr. Titiev’s car for a document inspection on Tuesday.