The Southern District Military Court continued its consideration of the case of resident of Ingushetia Abo Dobriyev who is accused of attacking law enforcement officers as part of a criminal grouping of Doku Umarov. Yunus Didigov, who had previously been convicted of involvement in the same bandit group, was questioned in court via video link.
During the hearing, the prosecutor read out Didigov’s testimony, which he gave at the stage of preliminary investigation. Then the witness said that he knew Dobriev as a member of the Umarov gang under the call sign «Isa» and had seen him several times, but only when wearing a mask. Didigov’s past testimony also suggests that Dobriyev took part in several attacks by the group, including an assassination attempt on Ingushetia’s OMON commander Khusein Toldiyev in 2012.
However, in court, Didigov refused to testify and stated that he had been forced by physical violence to incriminate Dobriev.
«When I was transported to Krasnoyarsk Region, I was transferred to a cell with prisoners who tied me up, beat me and threatened all kinds of things. After that they took me to two police officers Denisov and Golovlev, who gave me some papers and said: «Either you sign, or we put you back in», — said Didigov.
He stated that he had never seen Dobriev and only learned about him from police officers. That said, he knows the man under the call sign «Isa» well. Didigov refused to say who he was, but pointed out that only five people took part in the gang in Nazran. Apart from Yunus himself, these are Akhmed Tutaev, Adam Ekazhev, Khasan Nalgiev and Timur Ortskhanov.
Abo Dobriev was detained in Ingushetia in March 2019 after a rally against an agreement with Chechnya on the republic’s borders. He was placed in pre-trial detention, but the court did not see sufficient grounds for his guilt of organizing the rally and infringement on the life of law enforcement officers. On his way out of the detention center Dobriev was detained again — this time on a new criminal case.
Dobriev was charged with participation in a criminal association, murder, arms trafficking and manufacturing explosives. We are talking about an attack on police officers, an EMERCOM official and a OMON captain, and about the firing of a prosecutor’s office in Nazran. All of the above happened in 2010-2012.
Sherip Tepsayev, Dobriev’s former lawyer, stressed that the entire prosecution was based on the testimony of one man — Timur Ortskhanov, whom Russian security forces believe to be the commander of one of the banned «Caucasus Emirate» groups.
