Chechen dissident Tumso Abdurachmanov, who lives in Sweden and is said to be a harsh critic of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, has reportedly disappeared. The Chechen human rights organization Vayfond, also based in Sweden, wrote on Saturday December 3 that they had not had any contact with Abdurachmanov for two days. His brother Mochmad, who works for Vayfond and applied for asylum in Germany in 2017, is also “no longer available”.
The Chechen news site “1ADAR”, citing its “network of informants” in Europe and Chechnya, writes that Abdurachmanov was shot dead on Saturday night. The Swedish daily newspapers Days Nyheter and Aftonbladet initially only wrote that Abdurachmanov, who fled Chechnya in 2015 and has enjoyed asylum in Sweden since 2021, had disappeared. His brother Mochmad is “hidden by European secret services”. The Swedish security police have not yet provided any information.
Tumso Abdurachmanov is perhaps the most prominent exile in opposition to the Russian republic of Chechnya. He has around 500,000 subscribers on his YouTube and Telegram channels. In his videos, which he publishes under the name “Abu Saddam Shishani”, he accuses Ramzan Kadyrov of serious human rights violations such as kidnapping, torture and extrajudicial killings and repeatedly describes Kadyrov as a “traitor” to the Chechen people.
His brother was also supposed to be killed – the process is underway in Munich
In March 2019, Chechen parliament speaker Magomed Daudov called for “blood revenge” on Tumso Abdurachmanov. Then, in 2020, Abdurakhmanov was severely injured by a burglar with a hammer at night after months of scouting. Abdurakhmanov was able to overpower the perpetrator and call the police. The assassin and his accomplice were proven to have connections to Moscow and the Chechen security services during the trial. The perpetrator was sentenced to twelve years in prison and should be deported from Sweden.
In December 2021, several of Abdurakhmanov’s relatives were kidnapped in Chechnya. A trial against a Russian accused of planning an assassination attempt on Tumso’s brother Mochmad began in Munich this summer. According to the indictment, after the failed attempt to murder Tumso, the aim was “to silence him by killing his brother”. In this case, the client is said to have been a cousin of Ramzan Kadyrov.
In recent years, several Chechen opposition figures have been killed in other European countries. In Germany, Selimkhan Changoschvili, a Georgian who belonged to the local Chechen minority, was shot dead in Berlin’s Tiergarten in August 2019.