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Salman Tepsurkaev, the moderator of the 1ADAT Telegram channel, has been killed, says Olga Sadovskaya, a lawyer with the Team Against Torture, in an interview with Katerina Gordeeva.
“We know for sure that he has died. We could not save this man,” Sadovskaya said.
Tepsurkayev was kidnapped in September 2020 in Gelendzhik. Eyewitnesses tried to rescue him from kidnappers, but one of them flashed an ID card of a Chechen Republic Interior Ministry officer. Tepsurkayev was taken to Chechnya, where he was tortured on camera and forced to sit on a bottle. A video of the torture was posted online.
After Sadovskaya's statement, information about Tepsurkayev's murder was published on the 1ADAT Telegram channel. The reports says that Tepsurkayev was killed soon after he was kidnapped, in September 2020, by putting a grenade in his mouth.
“After Salman was kidnapped, the Kadyrovites made him sit on a bottle on camera, after which they filmed staged videos depicting Salman walking freely around Grozny. All of these clips were filmed on September 7, 2020. After the filming, Salman was taken out of Grozny from the area where the 2nd Akhmat Kadyrov Regiment was stationed.
He was killed on September 15, 2020, at a military firing range near the village of Dzhalka, the ancestral home of Adam Delimkhanov, deputy to the State Duma. They tied him up, put a grenade in his mouth and blew him up from a distance. They tortured and humiliated Salman for a week and finally murdered him in a gruesome way, but even that wasn't enough for the despicable Kadyrov criminals. They gave his body to his relatives and told them to “bury him like a dog.” Salman's body was buried in an unmarked grave.”
The Adat Movement
In July 2022, the Russian Ministry of Justice added the “Adat People's Movement,” which has been slamming Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov via its Telegram channel, 1ADAT, to the list of extremist organizations.
Local activists have repeatedly reported abductions and torture because of suspected ties to the movement. In 2021, Abubakar Yangulbayev, son of former Chechen judge Saidi Yangulbayev, told the Committee against Torture that “Kadyrovites had kidnapped” about forty of his Chechen relatives. Abubakar's brother Ibrahim admitted that he was one of the founders of the channel. Ibrahim himself had also been kidnapped, with Ramzan Kadyrov directly involved in his torture.
On 20 January 2022 Chechen policemen burst into the apartment of judge Saidi Yangulbayev in Nizhny Novgorod. He was not kidnapped because of his immunity status, but his wife Zarema was kidnapped. She suffers from type 2 diabetes and needs insulin injections five times a day. The law enforcers did not allow Musaeva to take warm clothes, medicines, or even her passport with her. She is still in custody.
Head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov made threats against the Yangulbaev family. He called the family “accomplices of terrorists” and ordered them detained and “destroyed” in case of resistance. Kadyrov also wrote: “In any event, I declare that this family will either end up in prison or underground. And that's no longer up to me.” Following Kadyrov, Chechen State Duma deputy Adam Delimkhanov speaking live on Instagram promised to cut off the heads of Judge Saidi Yangulbayev's family members.
Presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov has repeatedly stated that the Kremlin did not consider it necessary to deal with complaints about Kadyrov's threats and that the promises of death were the “personal opinion” of the Chechen leader.