U.S. Sanctions Chechen Officials Responsible for Torture and Detention of Gay Men
The U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday sanctioned several Chechen officials and a law enforcement agency in relation to a new wave of persecution of gay men in the southern Russian Republic: Abuzayed Vismuradov, the Terek Special Rapid Response Team (a special division of first responders), Sergey Leonidovich Kossiev, Ruslan Geremeyev.
Radio Free Europe reports: ‘The individuals targeted were sanctioned under the 2012 Magnitsky Act. That law, and a wider one passed four years later, gives U.S. officials the authority to sanction people and entities for human rights abuses in Russia and around the world. The Russian Embassy in Washington said that the U.S. sanctions would be met with “reciprocal measures,” according to the state-run TASS news agency.’
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HRW reported: ‘Human Rights Watch interviewed four men who were detained for between three and 20 days, between December 2018 and February 2019, at the Grozny Internal Affairs Department compound. Police officials there kicked them with booted feet, beat them sticks and polypropylene pipes, and tortured three of the four with electric shocks. One was raped with a stick. The men’s accounts are consistent with a crime report filed on January 29 with Russia’s chief investigative agency by the Russian LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) Network, a prominent LGBT rights group, which stated that in December and January, police in Grozny, Chechnya’s capital, rounded up and abused 14 men. The report suggested that the true scope of detentions was broader.’
The men told Human Rights Watch that police took their cell phones and then ordered them under torture to identify other gay men, sometimes with photographs. One man told the group that police outed him to his family and then urged them to kill him. They also demanded cash ransom for their releases
Read more: http://www.towleroad.com/2019/05/sanctions-chechnya/