Kremlin Human Rights Council issues statement demanding punishment for those behind attack on Kalyapin in Grozny
MOSCOW. March 18 (Interfax) - The Russian presidential Human Rights Council has demanded an investigation into the attack on the council's member Igor Kalyapin in Grozny, as well as a public apology to him, the council said in a statement published on its website on Thursday.
"We stand in solidarity with our colleague and express our full support to him. We demand not only a thorough investigation and punishment for those guilty, but also a public apology to Igor Kalyapin and the council. We are convinced that there should be no territories in our country where Russian laws are powerless," the council said in its statement.
The obvious goal of those who masterminded and staged this attack was "to humiliate and intimidate all those engaged in the activities of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture, which Kalyapin heads," it said.
Those who attacked a minibus carrying journalists and committee members on the border between Ingushetia and Chechnya on March 9, 2016, and those who assaulted the committee's office in Grozny on June 3, 2015 pursued a similar goal, the council said.
"All these crimes form a single chain, which law enforcement agencies have so far proved unable to break, or did not want to," it said.
