Detention of Dagestani athlete Nurmagomedov reminds of law enforcers' bias to Caucasians

Additional checks of natives of Northern Caucasus at the border are a common practice for Russian law enforcers, who are guided by subjective perceptions of suspicious individuals. This was stated by human rights defenders and lawyers after the detention of Khabib Nurmagomedov.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that Nurmagomedov was questioned at the Moscow airport prior to his flight to Turkey. According to sources, border guards suspected him of trying to join a terrorist organization.

Law enforcers regularly detain people of certain nationalities and religions because of suspicions of their illegal activities, Svetlana Gannushkina, the head of the Civil Assistance Committee, has stated.

According to her story, sometimes natives of Northern Caucasus can be unreasonably detained for hours and even days. Ms Gannushkina gave an example of a lady-teacher of German from Vienna, who is a native of Ingushetia. When the woman flew to Moscow, she was detained left alone in the room for the night without food; and only in the morning she was allowed to fly to Ingushetia. She had all the necessary documents with her.

Sometimes arbitrary detentions of natives from Northern Caucasus at the border result in facts that "people are accused of the crimes they never committed," Ms Gannushkina has added.

Enhanced checks of people with "pronounced" signs of belonging to Islam are carried out when crossing the border "very often," the lawyer Timofei Shirokov has confirmed.

Roza Magomedova, a native of Chechnya and a lawyer of the association "Migration and Law", has repeatedly witnessed detentions at the border checkpoint of people from the Caucasus or those with Muslim names and surnames.

"Even famous people got under such checks. For example, the deceased Orkhan Djemal told that border guards once clung to his name," Ms Magomedova has added.