The Chechen blogger on the run

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 4 June 2020

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In February this year, a Chechen blogger in hiding in Sweden was viciously assaulted by a man with a hammer as he slept. In the fight that followed, Tumso Abdurakhmanov managed to grab the hammer and defend himself, and filmed the aftermath of the attack and his interrogation of his assailant.

Tumso was the third Chechen to be attacked in Europe in just a few months; he was the only one to survive. All three men were critics and opponents of the pro-Moscow regime in Chechnya, an area in Russia’s volatile North Caucasus mountains where the authorities are accused of serious human rights abuses and violations. For Assignment, Nick Sturdee investigates who may have sent Tumso’s attacker, and explores the blogger’s relations with the Chechen government and leader Ramzan Kadyrov.

What are the parallels with another recent attack, in Berlin, where former Chechen fighter Zelimkhan Khangoshvili was shot dead? A case where the Bellingcat investigative team has identified the killer and revealed his close connections to the Russian Security Services, the FSB.

Produced and presented by Nick Sturdee

(Image: Tumso Abdurakhmanov takes a selfie in Stockholm. Credit: Tumso Abdurakhmanov)

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's February the 26th. A half-naked man is filming the aftermath of a vicious fight on his mobile phone.
0:22.0	He's a Chechen blogger called Tumso and he lives in hiding in
0:26.8	exile in Sweden. He's holding a hammer in his hand. Who's sent you?
0:34.0	He demands.
0:35.0	The other man is fully dressed, lying face down next to a bed.
0:41.0	From his head a half metre long trail of thick blood, pasted along a linoleum floor
0:46.6	across which he's apparently been dragged. He was sent by a man from Grozny, he says. That's in Chechnya in Russia's volatile North Caucasus mountains.
0:58.0	Where are you from? Moscow. How did you get my address? They told me. And what's your name? And what's your name?
1:10.0	What's your name? Ruslan.
1:13.0	This is assignment on the BBC World Service.
1:20.0	I'm Nick Sturdy, and this is the story of how two Russian-speaking men came to be locked in
1:25.8	mortal combat in a small flat in a provincial Swedish town clubbing each other on the head
1:31.2	with a hammer.
1:32.2	How an apparent assassination attempt against a critic
1:35.4	went wrong, and how Russian state officials may be conducting revenge killing in Europe.
1:43.0	On the morning of the 26th of February this year, a 34 year old asylum seeker from Chechnya
1:50.0	prayed and then went to bed in his one-room apartment in the sleepy Swedish town of Yavli.
1:55.6	He'd been working on a report for his YouTube channel to commemorate a battle between Chechen
2:01.2	separatists and Russian
2:02.6	paratroopers 20 years earlier.
2:04.8	I woke up from being hit hard on my head.
2:10.8	I don't know how many times I was hit. I just remember the shock of the first blow and opening my eyes to see someone sitting and hitting me.
	...

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