Defence claims attempts to conceal materials proving Ingush activists not guilty

Advocates of the leaders of the Ingush protests have obtained the involvement in the case of the experts who did not find any extremist appeals in the statements voiced by the defendants. The defence claims that investigators concealed the results of the expert examinations.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that the case of seven Ingush protest leaders, accused of creating an extremist community, is being considered by a court in the Stavropol Territory since November 24, 2020.

At a hearing of the Kislovodsk City Court held on August 4, the defence requested the court to look through the examinations that were carried out during the investigation, but were not included in the case file. A motion to reclaim the results of the examinations by the court was filed back in November 2020. According to psychological and linguistic examinations, the statements voiced by the leaders of the protest did not contain any extremist calls or incentives to commit violence, notes advocate Bilan Dzugaev, representing the interests of Zarifa Sautieva, one of the defendants, in agreement with the Human Rights Centre (HRC) “Memorial”*.

“According to the results of the examinations, carried out by order of the investigators, the charges were to be dropped from our clients. However, the investigators concealed the documents, and we were not able to obtain and examine them until the trial,” Bilan Dzugaev stated.

The court granted the defence motion and attached the expert examinations to the case file.

* The organization is included by the Russian Ministry of Justice (MoJ) in the register of foreign agents.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on August 5, 2021 at 05:22 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.