Amnesty International calls on Russian authorities to end Ingush case

| News, North Caucasus

The international human rights organisation Amnesty International appealed to the Russian authorities in the "Ingush case." Amnesty urges them to release the defendants and to reconsider the cases in which the participants of the 2018-2019 actions were brought to administrative and criminal liability. Human rights activists also recommend that residents of Ingushetia and other regions of the country be provided with the right to peaceful protest.

“These actions are essentially the exercise of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and the right to freedom of expression; they cannot be qualified as illegal actions. Even if the peaceful protests called for by Uzhakhov and Barakhoev were indeed illegal, criminal prosecution in the response to such actions is a completely disproportionate step that does not comply with international human rights law," stated Amnesty International, which provides a detailed analysis of the March 2019 protest events in Ingushetia.

Amnesty International recommends that charges be dropped against Akhmed Barakhoev, Akhmed Pogorov, Ismail Nalgiev, Musa Malsagov, Malsag Uzhakhov, Bagaudin Khautiev, Zarifa Sautiyeva, and Barakh Chemurziev. The organisation also advocates for the courts to revise the sentences and decisions on bringing to administrative responsibility against already convicted activists. Amnesty also supports amending the legislation to guarantee Russians the right to free of peaceful assembly.

A number of prominent Russian human rights activists issued a statement about the upcoming verdict on seven leaders of the Ingush protest. The leaders are accused of organising life-threatening violence against government officials at a mass rally against changing the borders of Ingushetia on March 27, 2019, in Magas, and three of them also in creating an extremist community. The statement was signed by the Memorial Human Rights Centre (the Russian authorities recognise the organisation as a foreign agent; Memorial disagrees with this), the Moscow Helsinki Group and the St. Petersburg Human Rights Council.

In Yessentuki, seven leaders of the Ingush protest are being tried. The prosecutor's office asks to appoint them a sentence of imprisonment for terms of seven to nine years.

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