Ingushetia: Estoev brothers detained and tortured

In Ingushetia, on September 24, at 5 a.m., in the settlement of Barsuki, dozens of armed persons in masks who had arrived in armoured UAZ minivans and passenger cars without license plates rushed into House No. 2 in the Estoev Street, where the Estoev family lives (the Gagiev kin), conducted a search and took away Estoev brothers - Musa Muradovich, born in 1974, and Adam Muradovich, born in 1987, in unknown direction.

The web site Ingushetia.Ru reports that the operation was performed by the members of the mobile group of the Russian MIA and other fighters of power agencies sent to Ingushetia from Russian regions. There were two employees of local law enforcement bodies, Ingush nationals, among the participants of the capture, who had expressed their discontent when power agents were beating the Estoevs during the kidnapping, striking the brothers with the butts of their sub-machine guns.

Several hours later, the Estoevs' relatives had managed to establish that Musa and Adam were brought to the GOVD (City Interior Department) of Nazran. The brothers were brought to different rooms one by one, where power agents of Slavic appearance were putting plastic bags over their heads, scoffed at them, asking why they were observing Islam and making namaz. The Estoevs' request to invite an advocate was rejected. They were presented no concrete charges, apart from discontent with their execution of religious rites and strange questions about these or those persons unknown to them.

Then, power agents brought the brothers to Magistrate Judge Batyr Toldiev, and more than a dozen of militiamen's reports were put on the table in front of the Judge evidencing alleged disobedience of the Estoev brothers. Seeing the obvious illegality of militia's actions, the Magistrate Judge would not arrest the brothers, but only fined them. Despite this fact, they continued to keep the Estoevs in the GOVD building, abusing them, taking to different rooms and subjecting to humiliating procedures.

Closer to midnight, when the situation around the illegal arrest of the Estoevs was strained beyond the limit, they were released.

It is remarkable that the Estoev family had been a victim of prosecution by special agencies long before the yesterday's raid - one of the members of the family Zurab Estoev (brother of yesterday's detainees Musa and Adam) was in custody for almost two years on far-fetched, as his relatives and friends assert, charges.