Nalchik resident accused of terrorism calls correspondence on his phone falsified

In the trial of six Nalchik residents accused of creating a terrorist cell, the defendants' phones were examined. Kazbek Emkuzhev's phone was not among them, and the accused Aslan Makoyev stated that the examined text of the correspondence was falsified.

As "Kavkazsky Uzel" wrote, lawyer Ramzan Uzuyev is defending 19-year-old Kazbek Emkuzhev from Nalchik, accused of participating in a terrorist organization. There are a total of seven defendants in the case, three of whom - Kazbek Emkuzhev, 19-year-old Tamirlan Chepchikov and 26-year-old Ratmir Murachayev - were kidnapped by unknown persons, beaten and tortured with electric shock. On April 12, 2024, security forces stated that Chepchikov and Murachaev were "liquidated" during a counter-terrorism operation; there was no investigation into their deaths.

The case of Kazbek Emkuzhev and five other living defendants (Mansur Kamolov, Aslan Makoev, Ibragim Albogachiev, Mukhamed Shomakhov and Temirkan Balkarov) is being heard in the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don. According to Uzuev's lawyer, all the defendants are connected only by the fact that they lived in the same area and used to play computer games in the same club.

Three prosecution witnesses did not appear at the last two hearings, in connection with which the court began to examine the case materials, including an examination of the defendants' phones, the Memorial Human Rights Defense Center reported*.

Among the phones of the accused that were sent for examination, for an unknown reason, the phone of Kazbek Emkuzhev was missing. Emkuzhev's relatives claim that in general there is no information about his phone in the case materials. Nothing suspicious was found in the phones of the other defendants, with the exception of Aslan Makoyev.

Correspondence with a certain girl was found in Aslan Makoyev's phone. Among the messages, presumably belonging to the accused, were the words that "we must fight, we cannot indulge the enemies of Allah ...", while Makoyev's interlocutor is not even a witness in the case. Aslan Makoyev himself told the court that “half of the examined text of the correspondence does not belong to him at all.”

The next court hearing is scheduled for July 22.

* are included in the register of foreign agents by the Russian Ministry of Justice.

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