A Chechen dissident disappears in Sweden amid suspicions of murder

Tumso Abdurajmánov, in November 2018 in an unspecified location in Poland.Francesca Ebel (AP)

The prominent Chechen opponent Tumso Abdurajmánov, a refugee in Sweden, has been missing for days, and some activists in exile denounce that he was assassinated last week in the Scandinavian country.

The blogger has been in recent years one of the biggest critics of Ramzan Kadyrov, the president who has ruled the Russian republic of Chechnya with an iron hand since 2007. The Swedish authorities have not officially ruled on the disappearance of Abdurakhmanov, who He has already survived an assassination attempt in 2020, although a police spokesman has told the

newspaper that they have no information regarding the matter and that there were no violent deaths in Sweden during the first two days of this month.

On December 1, rumors about the assassination of the 36-year-old dissident began to circulate on social media.

"We have enough information to confirm his death," he said on Monday on his Telegram channel

which has a wide network of Chechen informants, both exiled in European countries and residents of the Russian republic in the northern Caucasus.

"Tumso died at night, shot by a group of people," the Telegram message added.

Sources close to the family of Abdurakhmanov, who fled Chechnya in 2015, have confirmed to

his disappearance and fears that he has been assassinated.

Other specialized media in the Russian republic of one and a half million inhabitants cast doubt on the information from

.

The digital

has published a statement on Tuesday in which it highlights that some people who had announced Abdurajmánov's death these days have acknowledged that their statement is based exclusively on the inability to contact him, and that Shamil Albakov, a member of the organization Assembly of European Chechens, has declared that it trusts that the disappearance is related to a special operation of the Swedish espionage services.

In addition to the death of Abdurakhmanov,

reported on Monday on his Telegram channel that the blogger's brother, Muhamad, a well-known human rights activist, has been "hidden by the [Swedish] special services."

The personality cult of Ramzan Kadyrov is total in Chechnya.

The president, one of Vladimir Putin's closest allies, has enthusiastically defended the offensive in Ukraine launched by the Russian president in February.

Kadyrov's men have been roaming the invaded territory, he has advocated the use of tactical nuclear weapons to slow the advances of the Ukrainian army, and his own teenage sons will soon be joining the front lines.

The 46-year-old Chechen president is accused by multiple human rights organizations of torture, extrajudicial executions and harassing the LGTBI community.

Ramzán Kadírov (center), last April in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol. CHINGIS KONDAROV (REUTERS)

If Abdurakhmanov's violent death is confirmed, it would be the fourth of a Chechen dissident on EU territory in recent years.

In August 2019, Zelimjan Jangoshvili, a Georgian national, was shot dead in a Berlin park.

A few months later, blogger Imran Aliev was found dead in a hotel room in the center of the French city of Lille.

And in July 2020, a hitman shot opponent Mamiján Umárov in the head on the outskirts of Vienna.

The Vayfond organization formed by Chechen dissidents told

that they had no information regarding the alleged murder of Abdurakhmanov because they had been unable to contact his brother, who lives in Germany and who, according to this group of opponents of Kadyrov, is being held by the German secret services.

Vayfond maintains that no one has communicated with the missing blogger since November 30, and that he had returned a few days ago from a trip to Germany.

In February 2020, Abdurajmánov suffered an assassination attempt in the Swedish city of Gävle from which he was able to defend himself.

Minutes later, he posted a video online of himself, disheveled, trying to restrain an apparently wounded man, forcing him to confess that he had been sent by "a man named Abdurajman, from Grozny [the capital of Chechnya]." .

"I didn't want to kill you, just scare you," said the frustrated attacker on camera;

The enraged dissident replied: "Did you come here to hit me on the head with this hammer to scare me?"

In January 2021, Ruslan Mamaev, the attacker who was caught red-

, and another Chechen-born Russian citizen were sentenced to long prison terms in Sweden after being found guilty of attempting to kill the dissident.

Mamaev acknowledged at trial that he had acted at the request of the Chechen authorities, who had offered him the equivalent of almost 50,000 euros.

Abdurajmánov – who has almost half a million subscribers on his YouTube channel – denounced in December last year that six members of his family had been arrested in Chechnya, and that they would be killed if he did not publicly apologize to Kadírov.

In 2019, Magomed Daudov, president of the Chechen Parliament, declared Abdurakhmanov a "mortal enemy" of this Russian republic for his critical comments with the Kadyrovs, the current president, and Akhmat, his father, assassinated in 2004.

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