On 11 February 2010, Public Commission of Chechnya, consisting of 11 human rights NGOs from different regions of Russia, submitted an application to the head of the Investigation Administration of the Investigation Committee under the RF Prosecutor’s Office for Chechnya and Prosecutor General of RF with a request to perform a check and evaluate the quality of prosecutorial supervision over the lawfulness of detention of Russian human rights defenders.

You may remember that on 7 February 2010 around 7 p.m. in Shaly, Chechnya, the police detained three human rights defenders: Dmitriy Egoshin (Regional public organization “Human being and Law”, Yoshkar-Ola), Roman Veretennikov (NGO “Mothers in support of the detainees, indictees and convicts”, Krasnodar), Vladislav Sadykov (Bashkirian represenatation of INGO “Committee against Torture”).  The detention was organized by Magomed Daudov, head of the Shaly District Department of Internal Affairs, and performed under his personal supervision. The detainees spent the night of 07 – 08 February 2010 in the rooms of the Shaly District Department of Internal Affairs unable to leave the building and having no clue about the grounds for their detention. They were released at about 10 a.m.

The three detainees are lawyers of the Joint Mobile Group (JMG) of Russian human rights defenders that has been working in Chechnya since November 2009 investigating recent allegations of torture, abduction and notorious murders in that Russian region.

On 10 February 2010 workers of the Joint Mobile Group under the Public Commission of Chechnya Veretennikov, Sadykov and Egoshin detained by the Chechen police filed an application about the crime to the Shaly Interdistrict Investigation Department of the Investigation Administration of the Investigation Committee under the RF Prosecutor’s Office for Chechnya.

Address of Public Commission of Chechnya was signed by V.M. Gefter (head of the Human Rights Institute), S.V. Poduzov (co-chairman of Regional public organization “Human being and Law”), I.A. Kalyapin (chairman of INGO “Committee against Torture”), N.E. Taubina (director of the Public Verdict Foundation), T.A. Rudakova (chairman of NGO “Mothers in support of the detainees, indictees and convicts”), I.V. Sazhin (chairman of the Memorial Komi Human Rights Commission), I.N. Guirsh (Executive Director of the Interregional Human Rights NGO “Committee 29”),  D.S. Lantsov (President of the Siberian Human Rights Centre), Kh. Saratova (Independent Information and Analytical Agency “Obyektiv” ), M.V. Burmitsky (Board Chairman of the South-Siberian Human Rights Centre), A.Y. Yurov (Youth Human Rights Movement (Voronezh)

You can see the address itself on the following websites:

http://www.manandlaw.info
http://www.pytkam.net/web/
http://www.publicverdict.org/topics/news/7970.html