Ayna Mankieva. Screenshot: Marem
Police in Moscow have released a 21-year-old woman from the republic of Ingushetia, in Russia’s North Caucasus, who fled domestic abuse at home, after she spent the night in custody, Russian human rights group Marem reported on Thursday.
Ayna Mankieva was detained by police on suspicion of theft and was being held at a police station in Moscow’s northern Sviblovo district, Marem reported on Wednesday, amid fears that the police planned to transfer her to the authorities in Ingushetia.
Having fled her family home in April without even taking her documents, Mankieva released a video within a week of her escape in which she asked people not to look for her, and requested above all that no information about her whereabouts be passed on to her relatives, saying that she feared for her own life.
Mankieva, who is visually impaired, grew up in a large, low-income family, according to Marem, where, since childhood, she had been routinely subjected to violence, humiliation and exploitation. Her father was convicted of human trafficking in 2012 after attempting to sell a 2-year-old child known to the family.
On Thursday, it emerged that Mankieva had made a statement against her family while in police custody, asking the police to investigate her claims of domestic violence and seeking protection from them.
Marem said that the theft accusations made against Mankieva echoed the ruse used by St. Petersburg police to arrest fugitive Chechen woman Seda Suleymanova in August 2023. Suleymanova, who had also fled domestic abuse at the hands of her relatives, was ultimately returned to Chechnya, where she went missing and is now presumed dead, likely the victim of a so-called “honour killing”.
