Chechen blogger escapes apparent assassination bid in Poland

Tumso Abdurakhmanov is the latest victim of a murder attempt after similar attacks on exiled dissidents

Amnesty International had warned that Tumso Abdurakhmanov, who fled Chechnya, could be tortured if deported from Poland to Russia.-Photograph: Francesca Ebel/AP

Neil Hauer-Thu 27 Feb 2020

A well-known Chechen blogger has survived an apparent assassination attempt in Poland, in the latest of a series of attacks on dissidents exiled in Europe.

Tumso Abdurakhmanov posted a video showing him disheveled and breathing hard, standing over the bloodied body of another man. “Who sent you? Where have you come from?” Abdurakhmanov asks, before producing a hammer, which he says was used by the man in an attempted murder.

The injured man on the ground, whose voice is muffled, replies that he came “from Moscow”7 and says, “They have my mother.” There was no immediate comment from Polish authorities.

The Sweden-based Chechen rights group Vayfond described the attack as an assassination attempt.

Abdurakhmanov’s brother Mukhammad told the Kavkazsky Uzel specialist website that Abdurakhmanov had been admitted to hospital under police guard with non-serious injuries following the attack in Poland. The attacker was also in hospital.

Abdurakhmanov is one of the most prominent and outspoken critics of Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of Russia’s Chechnya province. He left Chechnya in 2015 following threats from a Chechen official linked to Kadyrov.

After being refused asylum in Georgia, Abdurakhmanov moved to Poland, where he lived at an undisclosed location while attempting to apply for asylum. The application was rejected by Poland’s interior ministry in 2018.

Amnesty International denounced that decision, saying that Abdurakhmanov would be placed “at very real risk of torture” if he were deported back to Russia.

The attack against Abdurakhmanov comes after a string of killings of other high-profile opponents of the Chechen government in Europe.

On 23 August 2019, Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a Georgian citizen of Chechen origin, was shot dead in central Berlin. Khangoshvili had fought in the second Chechen war against Russian forces in the early 2000s.

An investigation by Bellingcat, Der Spiegel and the Insider identified the suspect as Vadim Krasikov, a member of Russia’s elite Vympel special operations unit. The report concluded that Khangoshvili’s killing “was planned and organised by Russia’s FSB security agency”.

Moscow has denied all accusations of involvement in the attacks.

On Thursday Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the attack on Abdurakhmanov, saying “we don’t think it is an important incident for Russia’s (news) agenda.”

Kadyrov has been in charge of Chechnya since his father Akhmat was killed in a bomb attack in Grozny in 2004. The Kremlin credits him with bringing stability to the area after an Islamist insurgency that followed two post-Soviet wars. But rights groups say this has come at the expense of horrific abuses including murders and kidnappings.

Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report