July 12 () –
Russian journalist Yelena Milashina, attacked last week in the Chechnya region, was discharged from hospital on Wednesday, as confirmed by journalist Alexei Venediktov, head of the now-defunct Echo Moscow station.
“Lena Milashina has been discharged from the hospital, although she remains under medical supervision,” Venediktov said on his Twitter account. The journalist has pointed out in statements given to the Russian news agency TASS that Milashina “is feeling better” and added that she “requested to be discharged to work”.
Milashina and her lawyer, Alexander Nemov, flew to Moscow last week with Venediktov and Nobel Peace Prize winner Denis Muratov. The journalist and her lawyer were attacked in the Chechen capital by a group of unidentified armed individuals.
The journalist herself recounted that the attackers, still unidentified, tried to cut off her finger to unlock her mobile phone. The NGO Memorial has also reported that the attackers damaged documentation and computer equipment, without any group having claimed responsibility for this event or justified it in any way.
Milashina and Nemov intended to attend the trial against Zarema Musayeva, a 53-year-old woman who claimed to have been kidnapped by a group of men claiming to be part of the Chechen Police and who is being tried for allegedly violently resisting the agents.
The leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadirov, who had publicly charged Milashina, has called for doing “everything possible” to arrest the culprits. The Kremlin has also condemned these events, on which the Russian Investigative Committee has opened a case.
For their part, UN experts have been “dismayed” by the “violent physical attack” and have asked Russia to investigate to “bring its perpetrators and those who ordered it to justice,” while stressing that it is “another example of the flagrant disregard for the safety of journalists and human rights defenders” and the risks they both face “in their efforts to protect human rights and seek justice for victims in Russia and, particularly, in the Chechen Republic”.
