Zarema Musaeva. Photo: Crew Against Torture
Chechnya’s Supreme Court has overturned the most recent prison sentence given to Zarema Musaeva, whose prosecution and imprisonment are widely seen as politically motivated acts of revenge against her three opposition activist sons in exile, Russian human rights nonprofit Crew Against Torture said on Tuesday.
Musaeva, the jailed wife of former Chechen Supreme Court justice Saidi Yangulbaev and the mother of Abubakar, Ibragim and Baisangur Yangulbaev, three well-known human rights activists and outspoken critics of Kremlin-installed Chechen head Ramzan Kadyrov, has been in detention since she was first arrested in the Chechen capital Grozny in 2022.
Initially sentenced to five-and-a-half years in a low-security penal colony in July 2023 after being found guilty of fraud and assaulting a police officer, Musaeva received an additional custodial sentence in August 2025 for “disrupting a penal colony’s activities” after she allegedly attacked a prison guard and scratched his neck, accusations she has always denied.
On Tuesday, Musaeva’s defence team appealed that decision and requested that her sentence be overturned, denying that any such incident had occurred and stressing that there had been no witnesses to the supposed attack.
According to Crew Against Torture, the state prosecutor supported Musaeva’s defence team’s motion during the hearing, and also requested that Musaeva’s conviction be overturned and the case be retried.
“I carefully reviewed the criminal case materials and concluded that the court failed to consider any of the arguments presented by the defence,” the prosecutor said, adding that it had also “failed to consider” conflicting evidence regarding the motive for an attack given “the lack of animosity between Musaeva and the victim”.
Despite overturning her sentence, the Supreme Court ruled that Musaeva would remain in custody until her retrial could begin.
Musaeva, 56, has suffered worsening physical health since her initial detention in 2022, and was hospitalised multiple times in 2023 and 2024. She is known to suffer from type-2 diabetes, hypertension and cataracts, and has extreme difficulty walking.
