A court in Chechnya has sentenced Zarema Musaeva, the mother of two prominent opposition activists, to three years and 11 months in a penal colony for allegedly disrupting prison operations. The Shalinsk city court found her guilty of attacking a prison guard and scratching his neck — though no witnesses saw this happen, according to human rights monitors at the Crew Against Torture.
Zarema Musaeva has insulin-dependent type 2 diabetes and health problems that have worsened in prison. In her closing statement, she asked not to be sent back to the facility where she had served her first sentence — the same place where the guard who accused her of this attack still works.
This case highlights the Kremlin’s broader crackdown on opposition figures’ families under Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. Musaeva’s sons, Abubakar and Ibrahim Yangulbaev, are prominent critics of Kadyrov’s regime. Her husband, Saidi Yangulbaev, is a retired federal judge who fled Russia with his daughter after his wife’s detention. The Yangulbaevs are among many families targeted as part of the systematic persecution of Kadyrov’s critics and their relatives.
In January 2022, Chechen security forces abducted Musaeva at her home in Nizhny Novgorod, more than 860 miles (1,385 kilometers) from Chechnya. The officers forcibly brought her to Grozny, where they placed her in a pretrial detention center, initially as a witness but later charged with attacking police. She was first sentenced to five and a half years at a general regime colony (a medium-security facility) for fraud and violence against a law enforcement officer. The Chechen Supreme Court later reduced the sentence to five years in a penal colony (a minimum-security prison).
