An ethnic Chechen has gone missing in Russia after being deported from Egypt, human rights activists said on Sunday, suggesting authorities may have detained him to put pressure on his father — a Chechen separatist leader.
Amnesty International had warned that Maskhud Abdullayev could be subject to torture if he were sent back to Russia.
Activists said he has not been seen since he arrived late on Friday on a flight to Moscow, though they said they did not believe he was wanted on any charges in Russia.
Abdullayev was one of several Russians detained in Egypt last month, according to activists and Russian media. Most were students from the North Caucasus, a heavily Muslim region of southern Russia that includes Chechnya. Persistent violence in the region has spawned human rights abuses blamed on both militants and government forces, though large-scale fighting in Chechnya has abated after two separatist wars in the last 15 years.
Local media said Abdullayev and at least five others were deported apparently because they were in Egypt illegally.
Rights activist Yelena Sannikova told Russia’s Ekho Moskvy radio on Saturday that she feared Abdullayev had been detained by Russian intelligence or security authorities.
MOTHER
She said she had been asked by Abdullayev’s mother, who lives in Azerbaijan, to meet her son at the airport, but he never emerged from the arrivals area.
Russian Federal Security Service officials declined comment, and Interior Ministry officials could not immediately be reached, while Interior Ministry branch in Chechnya said it had no information about Abdullayev.
Oleg Orlov, chairman of the rights group Memorial, said he would appeal yesterday to officials for information about Abdullayev’s whereabouts.
“We will try to get an answer,” he told Ekho Moskvy on Sunday.
Amnesty warned last week that Abdullayev would be at risk of torture or other ill-treatment if returned to Russia because he is the son of Supyan Abdullayev, a Chechen commander identified by a separatist-allied Web site as top rebel leader Doku Umarov’s deputy.
DIVORCED
Ekho Moskvy quoted Abdullayev’s mother as saying that she divorced Supyan Abdullayev nine years ago, and that her son has had no contact with him for years.
Amnesty said Maskhud Abdullayev has at least a claim to refugee status in Azerbaijan, where he reportedly lived before traveling to Egypt.
On May 29, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said several Russians studying at Cairo’s al-Azhar University were among more than 30 people detained by Egyptian security services a few days earlier.
Egyptian authorities told the Russian Embassy they were checking whether the students were in Egypt legally, the ministry said.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who has spoken about the need to make Russia’s justice system more fair and improve the rule of law, is scheduled to visit Egypt this week.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of