The state prosecutor has requested a four-year settlement colony sentence for Zarema Musaev.

The prosecutor has requested a four-year settlement colony sentence for Zarema Musaev, mother of Chechen activists, in a case concerning disruption of a penal colony (Part 2, Article 321 of the Criminal Code). This was reported by the “Team Against Torture.”

Today, closing arguments in the case are taking place at the Shali City Court in Chechnya. Musaev is accused of hitting an FSIN officer and tearing off their shoulder strap while travelling in a car with them after being treated at a hospital. The woman did not admit guilt and denied the investigative version. According to Team Against Torture, none of the 14 witnesses in the case saw the alleged attack and stated this during court questioning.

Taking into account a one-month unserved sentence from a previous case, the prosecutor has requested that Musaev serve four years and one month in the colony.

In July 2023, the woman was sentenced to five and a half years in a general regime colony. Investigators alleged that she, together with an “accomplice” in 2017, orchestrated a fraudulent scheme involving consumer loans (Part 3, Article 159 of the Criminal Code), and after being abducted from Nizhny Novgorod and taken to Grozny for questioning, scratched a police officer’s cheek (Part 2, Article 318 of the Criminal Code).

Later, the Supreme Court of Chechnya reduced Musaev’s sentence to five years in a settlement colony. The prosecutor requested this due to the convicted woman’s health, which had significantly worsened during her time in remand.

Musaev was due to be released on 23 March this year. However, in November last year, a new criminal case was opened against her, so she remained in custody, despite the court’s cancellation of a six-month extension to her remand period.

In January 2022, Musaev was forcibly taken from Nizhny Novgorod to Chechnya, allegedly for questioning in a fraud case. There, the woman was sentenced to 15 days in jail on charges of petty hooliganism (Part 1, Article 20.1 of the Administrative Offences Code), and was later charged with large-scale fraud and use of force against a police officer. In February that same year, a court in Grozny sent her to a remand centre.

While in detention, Musaev’s health deteriorated. She has insulin-dependent type II diabetes, which prevents her from serving a sentence in a penal colony, as well as a number of chronic illnesses. The woman currently uses crutches and is unable to walk unaided. Her application for parole was rejected.

• Zarema Musaev is the wife of retired federal judge Saidi Yangulbaev; their eldest son, Abubakar Yangulbaev, worked as a lawyer for the “Committee Against Torture.” He and the couple’s other sons have also been suspected by the authorities of links with the Chechen opposition channel 1ADAT.
• Family members have been subjected to persecution for many years. “This family is headed for prison or the grave,” Ramzan Kadyrov said on his Telegram channel. In 2015, Saidi Yangulbaev and his eldest sons Ibragim and Abubakar Yangulbaev were tortured in Chechnya—something Ibragim spoke about.