Captured MMA fighter is handed over to the same Chechen security forces he says tortured him

Mixed martial arts fighter Murad Amriev, who says he was running for his life from Chechen security officials, was extradited from Belarus back to Russia on Friday, and then handed over to the same Chechen Interior Ministry agents he fled earlier this week and in 2013.

Amriev was detained on June 4 by border guards while entering Russia from Ukraine. Officials accused him of using false documents because his passport contains a typo. Amriev fled Chechnya in 2013, after members of the Chechen Interior Ministry allegedly tortured him for two days, demanding that he produce evidence against his older brother.

On June 6, Amriev fled the state prosecutors’ building in Bryansk, when Chechen security forces arrived and tried to take him into custody, claiming to have a warrant for his arrest. “He ran out of the building, jumped into his friend’s Lada Priora, and they drove off,” a member of the Committee Against Torture told the media at the time. 

On June 8, Belarusian border guards arrested Amriev on the grounds that he was wanted in Russia for traveling under false documents. Hours before officials in Belarus ultimately handed Amriev over to the Chechen police, his parents released a desperate plea, begging them not to send their son back to Chechnya, where they say his life will be in danger.