UMG of human rights activists to continue its work in Chechnya

The incident that happened on February 7 and related with detention of lawyers of United Mobile Group (UMG) - members the created in the end of the last year Public Commission on Chechnya, is convincingly demonstrating that the principles of legality, presumption of innocence and personal immunity are nothing for practical work of some bosses of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) of the Chechen Republic. This is the opinion of I. A. Kalyapin, head of the headquarters of the UMG.

Mr Kalyapin marks that the MIA spokesman said in his official comment that bringing the human rights activists to the ROVD and their compulsory detaining there for the whole night was allegedly caused by an application of some woman that arrived to the MIA and stated that the UMG lawyers had asked her "to write a slanderous statement against a local power official."

"Despite the obvious absurdity of such accusation, every citizen's application should be checked by law enforcement bodies. However, every check should be made under the acting federal law, which in this case has violently broken by employees of the Shali ROVD," runs the statement of the UMG headquarters that arrived to the "Caucasian Knot".

Mr Kalyapin states that the UMG will continue its work in the Chechen Republic, and the illegal actions of the employees of the Shali ROVD will be adequately estimated as prescribed by the current legislation.

The head of the group of human rights activists has emphasizes that in the course of their activities since last November the lawyers repeatedly faced facts of illegal pressure on the citizens who address them for help. According to his story, such pressure was rendered both by unidentified power agents and individual unfair inspectors of the Prosecutor's Office.