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Representatives of the Chechen opposition movement Niyso have reported the abduction of 17 teenagers from the village of Beno-Yurt in Chechnya’s Nadterechny district. According to Niyso, the reason for the unlawful detentions was because the teenagers were members of a Telegram chat room and were discussing certain topics that, from the point of view of the Chechen authorities, were ‘impermissible to discuss’.
‘As usual, no information is officially reported and the fate of the abducted is unknown’, Niyso wrote on their Telegram channel.
Niyso later clarified that they had learnt that Chechen security forces had kidnapped Zaur Altamirov, a 16-year-old resident of Katayama village, more than 10 days ago. His current whereabouts are unknown.
This is not the first time mass abductions have reportedly occurred in Chechnya.
Earlier, in February, Niyso reported that 60 residents in the Chechen town of Sernovodskoye had been kidnapped by Chechen security forces. According to them, it was the ‘the biggest mass abduction by the Russian regime in occupied Chechnya in recent months’, noting that almost half of the victims were women. Their whereabouts are also still unknown.
That same month, Niyso reported that hundreds of schoolchildren, as well as their family members, had been kidnapped in Chechnya in an attempt to identify an unknown person seen burning a Russian flag in a video. It is not known whether all of those abducted were eventually released.
In October 2024, security forces also reportedly kidnapped several people from the village of Engal-Yurt in Gudermes after someone set fire to fields in the village, which Niyso reported as having been seized by the authorities.
Prior to that, in May 2024, Chechen authorities reportedly abducted 80–90 people after a man burnt a car decorated with symbols associated with Chechen Head Ramzan Kadyrov and his family. The suspect was allegedly found, but was never named by the authorities.
There were also reports of mass detentions in Urus-Martan in December 2022 following a conflict between a traffic police officer and a special forces officer who refused to obey him.