Chechen activist Mansur Movlayev cut his veins in a pre-trial detention center in Kazakhstan, where he had been awaiting deportation to Russia after being denied asylum. In the note left, Movlayev stated that he did not want to be tortured by the Chechen law enforcement officers.
His lawyer, Vadim Drozdov, who represents him in international proceedings, informed the publication “Novaya Gazeta Europe” of the activist’s suicide attempt. The publication also published his suicide letter, in which he stated that neither the court nor the prosecutor’s office heard him, and that he was “tired of injustice.”
“They [Chechen security forces] will torment me, torture and kill me and then say that I did it myself” Movlayev wrote. He then asked the Kazakh authorities to bury him in this country so that the Kadyrovites [Chechen militia] “do not even get a corpse.”
He also demanded for the release of Russian activist Yulia Emelyanova, who is being held in the same prison in Almaty and faces extradition from Kazakhstan to Russia. Volunteer with Alexey Navalny’s St. Petersburg team, she was charged with stealing cell phone.
The Anti-War Committee of Russia said that he was provided with medical care, and now his life is not in danger. The management of the pre-trial detention center has not yet commented on the reports.
Mansur Movlayev is an opposition activist who criticized the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov. In 2020, he was convicted under the article on the illegal acquisition, storage, transportation, manufacture, processing of narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances or their analogues. According to Chechen activists Ibragim and Baysangur Yangulbayev, the case was fabricated.
The activist was released on parole in 2022. However, in August of the same year, he was kidnapped by officers of the Shali District Department of Internal Affairs of Chechnya and held in one of the “secret prisons”. He managed to escape and illegally, without documents, entered Kyrgyzstan. After being sentenced to expulsion for illegal border crossing by a court in Bishkek in October 2023, he ran away to Kazakhstan. .
In mid-May 2025, at the request of Russia, Movlayev was arrested and detained in Almaty in Kazakhstan. He applied for asylum, but the Kazakh authorities denied him refugee status. At the beginning of 2026, the Prosecutor General’s Office of the country granted the request of the Russian Federation for extradition. On September 10, the Court of Cassation confirmed the refusal of asylum and deportation to Russia issued to him, considering the allegations about the danger threatening Movlaev in his homeland unproven.
At the same time, Movlaev, with the assistance of human rights defenders and lawyers, applied to the Kazakh authorities for refugee status. However, despite having a strong case, his application was rejected, as Kazakhstan does not grant refugee status to persecuted individuals from neighbouring Russia and only grants asylum to certain applicants from distant countries in exceptional cases. Furthermore, the UN Human Rights Committee demanded that the Kazakh authorities suspend the extradition pending a final court ruling, whilst the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Russian Federation, Mariana Katsarova, expressed concern that, if returned to the Russian Federation, Mansur would face a real and imminent risk of torture, ill-treatment and extrajudicial execution.
This seems all the more plausible given that his family has been repeatedly abducted since 2022, in order to put pressure on him. On June 2 of this year, his brother Zelimkhan was hospitalized with severe rectal injuries as the result of torture inflicted at a police station, reported Mansur Movlayev’s support group on Instagram.
