Two Russian human rights lawyers arrested by Grozny police yesterday, December 14, after their office burned down were released, Slon.ru reported, citing a tweet from the Committee Against Torture in Nizhny Novgorod.

Babinets noted on this Facebook page that the security video from the building, published by Novaya Gazeta, at 9:33 shows three men coming to the Joint Mobile Group’s office.

The lawyers returned to their office to find all the equipment damaged and everything scorched. When they called the police to make a report, they wound up being detained and searched themselves, and having their laptops and cameras confiscated and their car and office searched without a warrant. Then they were taken to the police precinct because one of the law-enforcers said that Babinets was suspicious because he had a beard.

Two remaining staff, lawyers Sergei Babinets and Dmitry Dmitriev left for a hotel and were tailed by the gunmen. Later they learned their office was on fire. Both local and federal media denounced the human rights activists and broadcast on social media and television a false claim by Kadyrov that Kalyapin funded the terrorists.

Igor Kalyapin and other human rights activists held a press conference to condemn Kadyrov’s collective punishment, and supporters of Kadyrov threw eggs on them. Then they were warned that their office would be torched, so they evacuated staff before armed masked men arrived to ask questions about their activities.

The Joint Mobile Group of Human Rights Defenders, lawyers from the Committee Against Torture and other groups protested the order by Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov to burn down the houses of relatives of terrorists who died in a gunfight with police December 4. After members of the terrorist group Caucasus Emirates took over the Press House in the center of Grozny, police aimed heavy artillery on the building, causing one civilian to be killed. A total of 18 law-enforcers, including a relative of Kadyrov’s died in the battle along with 11 militants.

He identified them as high-ranking officials in Chechnya; the first man was unknown, the second from the left looks like Kamayev, the prefect for Zavodsky District in Grozny and the third appears to be Abushaykh Vismuradov, the head of the Interior Ministry for Grozny.

“Why did they come several hours before the fire?” he asks. Kalyapin noted that the man seemed to be taking out a pistol. “Did they really come to complain about torture?” he asked.

Babinets has continued to publish the photos of the destroyed homes of relatives of the terrorists.

This photo, taken by Novaya Gazeta reporter Yelena Milashina, shows the razed home of an elderly couple and their son and daughter-in-law, who had a sick one-year old baby. They have been left without property, money or identification papers and even warm clothes, and have nowhere to go — the Russian activists attempting to help such people are now themselves in trouble.

But through the help of Svetlana Gannushkina, who runs a Moscow-based organization to help migrants called Civic Action, they were able to get confirmation that the Ukrainian government will accept the family as refugees, and a Norwegian organization will provide assistance. An individual donor also sent them some emergency cash.

It was the 10th such home burned down.

Kalyapin, a lawyer based in Nizhny Novgorod, has about 1700 friends and 500 followers on Facebook, and many have urged him not to go back to Chechnya because it is too dangerous. Some Chechens have also questioned whether peaceful protest is futile, and say they understand why the terrorists took up arms because they feel it is impossible to obtain justice when the system is so abusive and corruption. Some Russians have also questioned why Kalyapin remains in the Presidential Council for Human Rights, when that is a symbol of Putin and the cooptation of the human rights movement.

Kalyapin replied that he was nominated to the Council in order to provide some level of protection when he and his colleagues traveled to Chechnya.

“If I an my colleagues don’t go and speak out, then the rest will find it even more difficult and dangerous.” He said he was relying on the Internet “which has become the chief source of information and communication for the more thinking part of the population.” If the state has control of most of the population through TV, he can reach those on the Internet:

I believe that every person whom I manage to tear away from the 85% and bring to the current 15% is very precious. And all the more the work which we are doing. Besides, you shouldn’t forget that we help concrete people with our work, who suffered from abuse. And odd though it may be, it provides results: look at our site, 109 police officers tried for torture, victims compensated for about 26 imllion rubles, and 633 unlawful actions by investigative agencies reversed. That also means something?”

The terrorist attack and the crackdown on human rights lawyers protesting the ferocity of Kadyrov’s response has put Chechnya back in the news. The New York Times, Foreign Policy and other major media have begun cover the republic again, after a period of relative calm following two wars in the 1990s and high-profile terrorists attacks earlier in this decade.

The last four years have seen only two terrorist attacks with a total of 24 police and 3 civilians killed. Grozny has witnessed a construction boom and a return to peace, but only due to Kadyrov’s ruthless authoritarianism, under which any Muslim believers who are outside official state-sanctioned mosques and any young men who engage in any suspicious activity can be arrested, tortured, imprisoned or killed.

— Catherine A. Fitzpatrick