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The appellate court has decided to send the case of Zarema Musaeyeva back for a retrial, reports the “Team Against Torture.”

Lawyer Alexander Savin had requested the conviction be quashed and for his client to be released.

The prosecutor partially agreed with him. He requested that the conviction be overturned and the case sent for review. During the hearing, the prosecutor stated that the first-instance court had violated the principle of adversarial proceedings and failed to consider the defence’s arguments:

“I have carefully studied the case materials and have come to the conclusion that the court did not assess any of the defence’s arguments. It did not consider that there is contradictory evidence regarding the absence of motive for the crime, and regarding the lack of animosity between Musaeyeva and the victim. This demonstrates the absence of the principle of adversarial proceedings and a formal approach by the first-instance court in considering the criminal case.”

Musaeyeva will await a new trial in pre-trial detention.

  • In August 2025, she was sentenced to 3 years and 11 months in a penal colony settlement for allegedly using violence against a Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) officer (part 2 of Article 321 of the Criminal Code). She was accused of hitting an FSIN officer and ripping a shoulder mark off his uniform while being transported with him by car from hospital. Musaeyeva says she did not do this. If not for this conviction, Musaeyeva would already have been released, as her sentence on the first case was about to end.
  • In July 2023, she was convicted on charges of fraud (part 3 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code) and using violence against a police officer (part 2 of Article 318 of the Criminal Code), and sentenced to five and a half years in a penal colony. On appeal, her sentence was reduced to four years and nine months. In this case, Musaeyeva was accused of consumer credit fraud, and of scratching a police officer’s cheek in 2022 after being abducted by Chechen security forces.
  • Musaeyeva is the wife of retired federal judge Saydi Yangulbaev and the mother of Chechen opposition activists. Her sons run the opposition channel 1ADAT, which reports on abductions in Chechnya and regularly criticises the head of the republic. In January 2022, security forces abducted Musaeyeva from her own flat in Nizhny Novgorod (a large city in European Russia’s Volga region) and took her by car to Chechnya. Her sons link their mother’s prosecution to their opposition activities.