‘If Someone Speaks the Truth, He Will Be Killed’

Disbelief was still evident in Aslan Artsuev’s voice as he relayed Malizaev’s story to me and played part of the telephone conversation. Artsuev, a Chechen opposition activist with a background as a lawyer, has, over the years, become a confidant of Malizaev’s as well as one of his legal advisers, as the dissident has tried (thus far unsuccessfully) to secure refugee status in Germany. Artsuev is no stranger to the suffering inflicted on opponents of the Chechen regime, yet even by those standards, Malizaev’s experience was extreme.

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Malizaev—fearing for his family’s life, as well as his own—eventually acquiesced to the demand, recording an audio statement that was briefly posted to YouTube, apologizing to Kadyrov for bringing shame on the Chechen people. But, as Artsuev recounted, “it wasn’t enough.” Malizaev was soon asked to make a video in which he would have to use even more groveling language, a demand he rejected. Days later, Artsuev said, two men appeared at Malizaev’s house and began physically beating him. The dissident managed to call Artsuev, and the lawyer quickly hopped into his car and began driving the hundreds of miles from his home in Hamburg to Lüdenscheid. By the time he arrived, Malizaev was in the hospital.

(Aspects of Artsuev’s account were first reported last spring by Kavkaz.Realii, part of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Two other Chechen activists in Germany, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution, supported Artsuev’s telling. I contacted Malizaev, but after the killing of a fellow Chechen exile in Berlin in August, he went into hiding and has since declined to comment. Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees did not respond to requests for comment regarding the deportation of Malizaev’s family.)

Malizaev’s experience was not the first time an anti-Kadyrov Chechen living in Europe faced threats and violence. Nor was it the last.

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Among the most recent, and the most daring, was the August 23 assassination of a Chechen dissident who went by the alias Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, who was shot dead in broad daylight in central Berlin. Germany has expelled two Russian diplomats over the killing, arguing that evidence shows it was carried out on behalf of either Moscow or Kadyrov’s government in Grozny. Moscow has denied any involvement in the killing; Vladimir Putin later claimed, without providing evidence or further details, that Khangoshvili had organized a bombing of the Moscow metro in years prior.

Though the murder itself was shocking, that Kadyrov may have been responsible is not surprising: The Chechen leader has made abundantly clear what will happen to those who criticize him, at home or abroad, including in Europe. In one video dispatch, he warns Chechen immigrants to the continent, “When you are kicked out of Europe, you will have nowhere else to go! And then you will answer to me for every word.” In another, he states simply, “No law on Earth will stop me.”

His remarks exacerbate what can often be a suffocating situation for Chechens abroad. According to NGO officials and analysts I spoke with, some 50,000 Chechens live in Germany alone, and as they wait for asylum applications to be processed, they are barred from working and subject to deportation for what rights groups say are often arbitrary reasons. Advocates for the Chechen community in Germany say these immigrants are frequently painted in a negative light—“that we are all criminals, terrorists,” says Zelimkhan Dokudaev, a Chechen who runs a cultural center that helps North Caucasian immigrants adapt to Germany.