Lena Patyaeva stands outside a police station in St. Petersburg with a sign reading “You sent her to her death. Now live with it. Where is Seda Suleymanova?”, on 25 November 2025. Photo: RusNews
A Russian woman who has been attempting to raise the profile of her missing Chechen friend, who is widely believed to have been murdered by her own family in a so-called “honour killing”, was ordered to spend 10 days in prison on Thursday for staging a solo picket demanding an investigation into her disappearance, independent news outlet RusNews has reported.
Lena Patyaeva was detained in St. Petersburg on Tuesday while mounting a one-person protest outside the police station where her friend, Seda Suleymanova, was taken in August 2023 before being forcibly returned to her family.
Suleymanova fled Chechnya in 2022 to avoid an arranged marriage, and reportedly told both her friends and human rights activists in St. Petersburg that her relatives could kill her if they found her and forced her to return to Chechnya.
Wearing a cap with Suleymanova’s name on it, Patyaeva stood outside the police station with a handmade sign reading “You sent her to her death. Now live with it”, for 40 minutes, before being detained by police and charged with “a repeat violation of picketing rules”. She was placed in a police cell for two nights before the court ruled on her case on Thursday.
St. Petersburg police and plain-clothes security officers from Chechnya detained Suleymanova on 23 August 2023 and took her to the police station, accusing her of stealing jewellery from her mother, after which she was forcibly returned to the Chechen capital Grozny.
There has been no news of Suleymanova since 29 August 2023, when Chechnya’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Mansur Soltaev, posted a photo of himself with a visibly battered Suleymanova in a headscarf, claiming she was “feeling fine”, six days after her abduction.
In February 2024, two separate sources told human rights organisation North Caucasus SOS that Suleymanova had been killed by her relatives in a so-called “honour killing”.
Patyaeva has been mounting solo pickets demanding an investigation into her friend’s disappearance and suspected murder since January 2024, including one in Grozny. This is the first time that she has been jailed for her protests, however.
