- Date
- 17/08/2006
- First
- Elina
- Surname
- ERSENOYEVA
- Sex/Age
- F, 26
- Incident
- missing
- Motive
- ?J
- Place
- town centre
- Job
- journalist
- Medium
- Federal District Plus
- Chechnya
- Street, Town, Region
- Grozny, Chechnya
- Freelance
- yes
- Local/National
- "Chechenskoe obshchestvo" newspaper
- Other Ties
- "widow of Shamil Basayev"
- Cause of Death
- missing, kidnapped
- Legal Qualification
- no information
- Impunity
- No Information
On 17 August 2006 unidentified servicemen kidnapped Elina Ersenoyeva in the Chechen capital. The 26-year-old is a freelance reporter for the "Chechenskoye Obshchestvo" newspaper and an employee of the Info Most NGO.
Eyewitnesses say Elina was kidnapped in downtown Grozny at about 9 am on her way to the office. Hardly had she and her aunt Rovzan got out of their taxi when unidentified men in masks and camouflage uniform grabbed them, shoved the two women into different cars and drove away. Some time after that, Ersenoyeva's aunt recalled later, both were pushed into a cellar. Eventually Rovzan was driven back to Grozny and dumped on the street.
According to the Polit.ru website, at noon that day Elina suddenly called Rovzan from her cell phone assuring her aunt that the problem would soon be over. At about 7 pm that evening she called her mother to say that the kidnappers were promising to release her later in the day. Her words were confirmed by one of the men to whom Elina passed her cell phone. Since then, she has not returned home and her phone has been switched off.
Two days prior to the kidnapping Ersenoyeva had turned to the International Helsinki Federation and the Demos Center for assistance. In her appeal Elina said that she and her family had been under strong pressure from the local paramilitary and security forces – allegedly because of her November 2005 marriage to a man who later turned out to be a militant [claimed to be Shamil Basayev, killed in early July 2006]. “My mother, two brothers and I have been persecuted ever since last March," the message said. "My husband died more than a month ago, but the persecution, far from subsiding, has only increased.”
A number of international and Russian human rights organizations, including the International Helsinki Federation (Vienna), International Human Rights Federation (Paris) and Demos Center (Moscow), have urged Chechnya’s prosecutor Valery Kuznetsov to immediately launch an investigation and do everything he can to secure Ersenoyeva’s early release and bring her kidnappers and those who have been making threats against her and her family to justice.
[GDF digest, 293; quoting "Kavkazsky Uzel" report, 19 August 2006]