UPDATE - Russian Ministry Says Investigation Opened Into Attack On Journalist In Chechnya

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 05th July, 2023) The Russian Interior Ministry said on Tuesday that its department in the Chechen Republic has launched an investigation into the attack on a correspondent for Russian opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta, Elena Milashina, and lawyer Alexander Nemov.

Earlier in the day, Novaya Gazeta reported that unidentified assailants had beaten Milashina and Nemov as they arrived in the Chechen capital of Grozny to attend a court hearing for Zarema Musayeva, the jailed mother of three voluntarily exiled Chechen opposition activists. Several masked men brutally beat Milashina and Nemov, took their cell phones and destroyed their equipment and papers, the newspaper said. The journalist was diagnosed with a closed head injury and fractured fingers, while the lawyer was stabbed.

"The Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Chechen Republic is conducting an investigation into the attack on Elena Milashina and Alexander Nemov in the Akhmatovsky district of Grozny," the ministry said on Telegram, adding that based on the results of the investigation, a procedural decision would be made.

The law enforcement officers are taking measures to identify and detain the persons involved in this attack, the statement added.

At the same time, Commissioner for Human Rights in North Ossetia Tamerlan Tsgoev told Sputnik that Nemov and Milashina would be delivered to Moscow by a chartered flight.

On the same day, the Ministry of Health for North Ossetia said that the condition of Nemov and Milashina was assessed as moderate.

"The patients were examined by specialists of the republican hospital, their condition is assessed as moderate and there is no threat to life. They are receiving the necessary treatment," the ministry noted.

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said that he had instructed the relevant agencies to make every effort to identify the people who had attacked Nemov and Milashina.

Mansur Soltaev, the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Chechen Republic, said that the attackers were driving a car without license plates.

The Chechen prosecutor's office also launched an investigation into the attack on the journalist in Grozny.

"Chechen Prosecutor Arsan Adaev took personal control over the conduct of a procedural check over inflicting bodily harm on July 4, 2023 in the city of Grozny by unidentified persons on lawyer Alexander Nemov and journalist Elena Milashina," the office said.

In January 2022, Musayeva, the wife of former Chechen judge Saydi Yangulbaev, was arrested in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod and taken to the Chechen Republic for questioning, where she was accused of assaulting a police officer. On Tuesday, a Grozny district court sentenced Musayeva to 5.5 years in prison for fraud and violence against authorities, a Sputnik correspondent reported. She did not plead guilty to the charges.