The arrest of 33-year-old Belkisa Mintsayeva was reported on April 14 by one of the founders of the human rights project Caucasus “without a Mother”. According to her, Mintsayeva is in the department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the Nadterechny district. There is no connection with Belkisa, location of her daughters (the eldest is 14, the youngest is 10 years old) is also unknown.
Mintsayeva has been living and working in Novosibirsk for the past few years. A few days before her arrest, she contacted the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin. Belkisa said that in 2024, her ex-husband Sulim Demulkhanov took their two daughters, the eldest Sabina and the youngest Diana. According to Mintsayeva, her ex-husband took advantage of the fact that the girls were visiting their maternal grandmother in Chechnya at the time. Then Demulkhanov took his daughters to his village of Komarovo in the Nadterechny district.
The former spouses went to court. They determined that the eldest Sabina would live with her mother, and the youngest Diana was left to her father during the investigation. But a few weeks ago, Mintsayeva came to visit Chechnya and took Diana away. According to her, when they met, her daughter cried, complained and asked to take her with them. That’s when the woman decided to take her daughter to Novosibirsk.
In response, Demulkhanov wrote a statement about the abduction, after which the police detained Mintsayeva’s brother and her unnamed acquaintance, who helped take Diana away from Chechnya. Unknown people started calling Belkisa. According to human rights activists, the woman was also threatened with sending her brother to war in Ukraine.
“At the request of my ex-husband, they call me from different numbers, they threaten me. They also threaten my mother and my relatives. I ask you to sort it out, as my children are very scared,” Belkisa mentioned in her video message to Bastrykin.
As a result, the threats had an effect on Mintsayeva. At the suggestion of her ex-husband, she agreed to come to Chechnya “for a conversation,” and she was detained there, the Marem project reports. According to human rights activists, it is also unknown where Sabina and Diana are now.
We should add that shortly before the incident, Mintsayeva’s daughters also recorded a video, only addressed to the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov. Sabina and Diana asked the politician to help them stay with their mother, claiming that their father had previously taken them away by deception, promising “mountains of gold” and private rooms.
“All this did not happen. We were lousy, dirty, and our clothes were worn,” complained girls.
