Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[KavkazUzel] Leila Gatagazheva, who was returned from house arrest to a pre-trial detention center for the second time in a row, needs treatment; her health was undermined in an Iraqi prison, a relative and lawyers said. The investigation into Gatagazheva’s case has been completed and there is no evidence of her guilt in the case materials, the defense emphasized. As the "Caucasian Knot" wrote, in February the investigation excluded the article on aiding terrorist activities from the charges against native Ingushetia Leila Gatagazheva; now she is accused only of participation in an illegal armed group.
On April 27, the court decided to transfer her to house arrest, and Gatagazheva returned to Malgobek from the Pyatigorsk detention center, human rights activists reported.
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On May 14, the Supreme Court of Ingushetia upheld the complaint of the prosecutor's office to mitigate the preventive measure against Leila Gatagazheva and returned the girl to the pre-trial detention center for the second time.
Leila Gatagazheva, born in 2001, is a mother of two children, she was accused of aiding terrorist activities (Part 2 of Article 205.5 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) and participation in an illegal armed formation on the territory of Syria (Part 2 of Article 208 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). Relatives took her at the age of 12 from Ingushetia to the Middle East and married her there when she was 13 years old. She has already served five years in an Iraqi prison on a similar charge of working for Islamic State militants, said the defense, which is seeking to have the criminal case dropped.
Leila Gatagazheva, who was again taken into custody on May 14 in the Supreme Court of Ingushetia, after the mitigation of the preventive measure, managed to stay at home for only two weeks, said lawyer Alaudi Musaev.
“The prosecutor’s office appealed the judge’s decision to release Gatagazheva from custody. The Supreme Court of Ingushetia overturned the decision of the Malogbek City Court to refuse to extend the detention. While she was in the pre-trial detention center, the children lived in Malgobek with their grandmother, Leila’s mother,” said lawyer for the “Caucasian Knot” correspondent.
Musaev noted that the investigation into Gatagazheva’s case has already been completed. “We have familiarized ourselves with the materials of the criminal case, now it must be sent to the prosecutor for approval of the indictment,” he explained.
Alaudi Musaev emphasized that in the case materials there is no evidence of Gatagazheva’s guilt.
“Gatagazheva has never been to Syria. There is no evidence that she knew in advance that her husband was a member of an illegal armed group. She was in Iraq, where she served her sentence. The first case was opened after three years of her being in an Iraqi prison. There, in Iraq, she was convicted under an article similar to Article 205 of the Russian Criminal Code. Only when the Russian Federation learned that Gatagazheva was in an Iraqi prison, she was put on the wanted list in gross violation of the law. Because you can’t put a person on the wanted list when you know where he is,” Musaev said.
Leila's defense sought to exclude charges under Article 205 from her case, pointing out that the girl had served a sentence in Iraq under a similar article. “But at the same time, she was charged under Article 208 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (participation in an illegal armed group). This happened after Gatagazheva had been in prison for six years,” Musaev explained.
The lawyer expressed hope that the court would be convinced of his client’s innocence.
“According to Iraqi law, she was tried precisely because she was the wife of an ISIS member, gave birth to two children, did laundry, cooked for him, and so on, but according to Russian law, it is impossible to convict her for this. By the way, neither Iraqi nor Russian courts convicted sentence to Gatagazheva’s husband to recognize him as a member of ISIS. Moreover, she herself surrendered to the Iraqi authorities, and according to Russian law this entails exemption from punishment if a person voluntarily surrenders to Gatagazheva on a special flight from Iraq last year after she left. punishment in an Iraqi prison," Musaev recalled.
He added that Leila was not 14 years old when her relatives married her off, “essentially putting her into slavery.” At the age of 14 she gave birth to her first child, at 15 - her second, and did not have the opportunity to go anywhere. The defense lawyer complained that the court is primarily inclined to evaluate the article of the accusation, and not the evidence of the involvement of a particular person in the charged crime.
Gatagazheva spent six years in an Iraqi prison and almost nine months in custody in the Russian Federation, her health is severely compromised and she needs medical care, said lawyer Ramina Labazanova, who is also defending Leila.
She literally gave birth to her first child at the age of 13-14, and was imprisoned for many years, often in unsanitary conditions. She has a lot of illnesses, including a hernia. A package of documents was prepared in the pre-trial detention center; she had to be admitted to the hospital, but now this is impossible,” said lawyer Labazanova.
He recalled that Gatagazheva was twice released from pre-trial detention center under house arrest, and in December 2023, the investigator also petitioned for a mitigation of the preventive measure for Leila.
On December 29, 2023, the Malgobek City Court, at the request of the defense, changed the preventive measure for Leila Gatagazheva from detention to house arrest, contrary to the request of the investigation. However, on February 1, the court, at the insistence of the prosecutor, transferred Gatagazheva back to the pre-trial detention center.
“But in February 2024, the prosecutor’s office appealed this decision, and she was again placed in a pre-trial detention center. At the end of April, at the end of the investigation, the court refused to extend her detention, and now the prosecutor’s office has appealed again. There was no reason to return her to the pre-trial detention center. While there “, she couldn’t communicate with the children. Only in winter she was at home for a month and now for about two weeks,” Labazanova complained.
The conditions in the Pyatigorsk pre-trial detention center were comparatively more acceptable for Gatagazheva than in the pre-trial detention center in North Ossetia or in the temporary detention center in Malgobek. Leila was brought to Malgobek for investigative actions, and she sometimes spent a week in the temporary detention facility, all alone on the entire floor. Now she is also in a temporary detention facility,” Labazanova said.
According to the lawyer, in the near future the defense will file an appeal against the decision of the Supreme Court of Ingushetia. In addition, before May 25, the court must once again hold a hearing to select a preventive measure.
Leila's uncle Beslan Gatagazhev is also very upset by her return to the pre-trial detention center. “The children are eight and seven years old, they feel fine. In the morning, I took the children to school, came to court, and she was taken into custody again. We hoped that when the documents were prepared, she would be able to go to the hospital,” he told the correspondent.” Caucasian Knot".
Both lawyers and relatives claim that Gatagazheva’s children have no problems with adaptation, and she has not received threats of deprivation of parental rights.
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