Ingush Activist Sentenced Over Violence At Rallies Against Chechnya Border Deal

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A court in Russia has sentenced an Ingush activist to 16 months in a colony-settlement for assaulting police officers during mass rallies against a controversial border deal with neighboring Chechnya last year.

A colony-settlement is a penitentiary in which convicts live close to a facility where they work.

A court in the city of Zheleznovodsk in the Stavropol region on January 23 found Magomed Ozdoyev guilty and sentenced him the same day.

Ozdoyev has partially admitted his guilt.

Since under Russian law one day in a pretrial detention center equals two days in a colony-settlement, Ozdoyev is due to be released on February 20.

Ozdoyev is the ninth activist to be sent to a colony-settlement for taking part in the violent rallies in the capital of Ingushetia, Magas, in March 2019 against the deal reached behind closed doors in September 2018 to settle an Ingush-Chechen border dispute.

Ingush opponents of the deal say that the region’s land is being unjustly handed over to Chechnya, whose strongman leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, has been accused of interfering in the affairs of neighboring Ingushetia and Daghestan.

Trials of several other Ingush activists who took part in the rallies are pending.