Oyub Titiev

On the morning of 9 January, Oyub Titiev was detained by people in the uniform of traffic police officers as he was driving from his home in the village of Kurchaloy to his acquaintances in the village of Mayrtup. According to a friend of the human rights defender who went to look for him, he wanted to approach Titiev, but the latter signalled him to pass by. After that, Titiev was detained and his lawyers were not allowed to see him for some time.

Subsequently, the press service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs reported the detention of Oyub Titiev, indicating that "during preventive measures" drugs were found in his car. Initially it was reported about 180 grams of "a substance of plant origin with a specific odour of marijuana", while the ruling on bringing Titiev as a defendant said 206.9 grams. According to the investigators' version, Titiev was detained after an inspection of the interior of his car, and the narcotic substance was found under the right front passenger seat. The inspection was allegedly carried out after traffic police officers stopped the car between 10:20 and 10:35.

This version contradicts the information received by journalists and the statements of Titiev himself who described the circumstances of his detention quite differently in court during the election of a preventive measure, during questioning and interrogation by investigators.

On 9 January around 9:00 he left his house in Kurchaloy. Half a kilometre away from his house, several police officers stopped his Lada and, without explaining the reasons, started to inspect it. One policeman diverted his attention by checking his documents, at which point another suddenly asked, 'What's in the bag you have?' and showed a black polythene bag. Oyub replied that the bag was not his and that he knew nothing about its contents. The police officers unwrapped the bag. It turned out to contain marijuana. Titiev was then taken to the Kurchaloy OMVD.

In the premises of the department, Oyub stated that the inspection and detention were illegal - in particular, there were no witnesses - to which the policeman replied, 'If you want to do it according to the law, it will be done according to the law.'

Titiev was put back into his car, his documents were returned (as it turned out later, not all of them), and an officer sat next to him on the right front seat. They left the territory of the district department and were soon stopped by traffic police officers. Titiev's "travelling companion" got out. When checking the documents, it turned out that among them there was no insurance for the car. Then the drugs were "discovered" again: while one policeman was looking at the documents and talking to Titiev, another said that there was weed powder scattered on the mat. The traffic police inspected the car and "discovered" a package, the same as the first time. One of them made a mobile phone call and 10-15 minutes later an investigation team and two men in civilian clothes, later introduced as witnesses, arrived at the scene. A protocol of the inspection of the scene was drawn up which Titiev refused to sign. After that, he was again taken to the police station. There, in the absence of his lawyer, biological samples and hand washes were taken from his hands.

Before the envelopes with samples and washes were sealed, Oyub Titiev, despite his objections, was taken to another office. Titiev expressed indignation that he could not see whether his samples were sealed in the envelopes. In a neighbouring office, a police officer took an explanation from the detainee about his family composition. When he was brought back to the office where the samples were taken, there was no one there, and the envelopes with the samples sealed in his absence were on the table.

Shortly after Titiev's colleagues became aware of his detention, his lawyer Sultan Telhigov came to the Kurchaloevsky OMVD, but the police told him for a long time that Oyub was not in the department. The fact of his detention was only recognised at around 17:00, following an appeal by Memorial to Mikhail Fedotov, Chairman of the Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation, and Tatyana Moskalkova, Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation. It was not until around 19:00 that the lawyer was able to meet with Oyub Titiev. The detention protocol was drawn up in the presence of Telhigov's lawyer after 20:00, then procedural documents were drawn up and initial investigative actions were carried out.

The next day, 10 January, the police raided the house of Oyub Titiev in the village of Kurchaloy. His wife and children were not at home, but relatives of his brother, Yakub Titiev, were in the house. The police said they were looking for Yakub and Oyub's twenty-eight-year-old son, Bekkhan Titiev. When they found out that both of them were not in Kurchaloy at the time, the police became furious and said that Bekkhan and Yakub must report to the district police officer tomorrow, 11 January, otherwise their relatives would be in trouble. The police then threw all the women out into the street, locked the house of Oyub Titiev and left taking keys with them.

Late in the evening of 10 January 2018, Oyub Titiev was charged with illegal acquisition and possession of narcotic drugs committed on a large scale under Part 2 of Article 228 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, which provides for up to 10 years' imprisonment. According to the investigation, he acquired drugs "under unspecified circumstances" and "in an unspecified place".

On 11 January 2018, the judge of the Shalinsky City Court ordered the arrest of Oyub Titiev until 9 March 2018. Titiev categorically denied that the bag of drugs "found" in his car allegedly belonged to him. According to him, the drugs were planted on him by police officers during the search without witnesses. In a written appeal to President Putin, Head of the Investigative Committee Bastrykin and FSB Director Bortnikov, Titiev stated that any confession of guilt on his part could only be obtained through physical pressure or blackmail.

On the night of 17 January in Nazran (Republic of Ingushetia), two unknown persons set fire to the office of the representative office of Memorial. Three out of six offices went up in flames. The arsonists were recorded by video surveillance cameras. On the evening of 22 January in Makhachkala, the car of the Memorial office was set on fire. The car was driven by a local lawyer who had been working with Memorial the day before and had travelled to the Chechen Republic to participate in an investigation into the case of Oyub Titiev. After the arson attack, the representative's mobile phone received an SMS: "You're walking on the edge of a precipice Close up! Next time we will set your office on fire together with you. Car Signal", followed by a call confirming the threats.

PC "Memorial" itself links both arson attacks, in particular, to the fact that the offices in Nazran and Makhachkala were on the list of places where witnesses to the detention of Oyub Titiev were asked to go.

On 25 January 2018, the Supreme Court of the Chechen Republic rejected the appeal of Titiev's defence which demanded a change in the measure of restraint.

On 26 January 2018, an identification of Oyub Titiev was conducted by a witness who allegedly saw him in some important circumstances for the prosecution. This witness was unable to identify Titiev among the people presented to him, about which the investigator drew up a relevant protocol, which was signed by the identifier, witnesses, Titiev and lawyer Pyotr Zaikin. Titiev was taken back to the pre-trial detention centre. The next day it turned out that the investigative team decided to refute the results of the identification. Identification can be carried out only once but the investigation decided to present it in such a way that the witness allegedly identified Titiev, and the incompetent investigator who conducted the identification misunderstood the protocol, which was used by Titiev and his lawyer. The investigator and the witnesses who were present at the identification were transferred to the status of witnesses. Titiev had confrontations with the former investigator and witnesses. They claimed that, contrary to the protocol signed by them the previous day, the witness had identified Oyub. On 28 January, Titiev had a confrontation with the same witness who had previously failed to identify him but now claimed that he had allegedly identified Oyub Titiev.

On 7 February 2018, lawyer Pyotr Zaikin received a message from the Shali City Court that the criminal case on charges of drug trafficking against Oyub Titiev had been withdrawn from the investigative department of the Kurchaloy District Department of Internal Affairs by decision of the Deputy Prosecutor of the Chechen Republic and transferred for further investigation to the investigative department of the Investigative Committee of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Chechen Republic.

On 18 March 2019, the court sentenced Titiev to four years in a penal colony. Titiev refused to appeal the sentence.

On 10 June, the court decided to release Oyub Titiev on parole. On 21 June, he was released.