Armenia’s Investigative Committee names those it suspects of murdering Chechen woman

Armenia’s Investigative Committee has named those it suspects of carrying out the murder of Aishat Baymuradova, a Chechen woman who was found dead in the Armenian capital Yerevan in October in what was widely believed to be a so-called “honour killing”, BBC News Russian reported on Tuesday. 

Naming the suspects as Russian citizens Karina Iminova and Said-Khamzat Baysarov, the Armenian Investigative Committee said that the pair appeared to have acted on the instructions of “an unidentified person”. 

The committee also said that Baymuradova’s cause of death had preliminarily been established as strangulation. While the body showed “small and large areas of haemorrhaging, consistent with blunt force trauma, there were also two small superficial marks on the right side of her face,” which the Investigative Committee believes may have been caused by burning.

Armenian investigators sent an unofficial notice to Interpol regarding the two suspects on 1 December, and also appealed to the authorities in Russia for assistance with their investigation, but have received no response, BBC News Russian reported.

Baymuradova, who reportedly fled to Armenia from Russia to escape domestic violence, was found dead in an apartment in Yerevan on 20 October. Iminova, a friend Baymuradova met on Instagram, was known to have been in the apartment on the day of the murder, as was Baysarov, a 30-year-old Chechen who prosecutors in Russia charged with financing Islamic State in 2018, before later dropping all charges.

Human rights activist Lidia Mikhalchenko told independent media outlet Agentstvo in October that Baymuradova had been strangled and that two unidentified suspects had been captured on surveillance footage outside the building where her body was found. Another source close to the investigation told independent Russian TV channel Dozhd that Baymuradova may have been poisoned.

Baymuradova’s body remains in a Yerevan morgue as her relatives have not responded to requests to collect her remains. On Sunday, the president of Armenia’s National Assembly, Alen Simonyan, promised to assist in transferring Baymuradova’s body to human rights activists for burial.