Chechen blogger Tumso Abdurakhmanov was killed

A Chechen video blogger and outspoken critic of Kadyrov, Tumso Abdurakhmanov, who lived in exile in Sweden, has been killed. This is confirmed by his co-workers, writes “Caucasian Knot”, although Swedish law enforcement has not yet commented.

Abdurakhmanov disappeared on December 1, and rumors of his death immediately began to circulate on social networks. The Kavkaz Front Telegram channel, which supports Russian aggression in Ukraine, posted a video showing the body of a man who looks like Tumso Abdurakhmanov.

However, representatives of the Vayfond Association and the Chechen Assembly of Europe stated that these reports did not look credible.

Now Abdurakhmanov’s employees say that the blogger was shot on the night between December 1 and 2. His brother Muhammed receives protection from the Swedish intelligence service, which is why he is also “unexpectedly and without explanation no longer available for all contacts”, says the Chechen human rights association Vayfond, also based in Sweden.

Tumso Abdurakhmanov received political refugee status in Sweden in October 2021. On February 26, 2020, a man broke into his apartment in Stockholm and tried to kill him with a hammer. Tumso joined in and managed to disarm him. Later, the attacker, Ruslan Mamaev, insisted in court that he did not plan to kill the blogger, but was on the orders of those who sent him from Grozny to Sweden.

A court in Sweden accused Russian citizens Ruslan Mamaev and Elmira Shapiaeva of involvement in the attack and sentenced them to ten and eight years in prison, respectively.

Who is Tumso Abdurakhmanov

Tumso Abdurakhmanov, born in 1985, worked for the state-owned company Elektrosvyaz in Grozny, first as an engineer and later as deputy director. After a conflict with a close relative of the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, he was persecuted, sent his family abroad, and then fled Russia himself.

In Chechnya, a criminal case was opened against Abdurakhmanov for participation in illegal armed groups. Chechen authorities claimed he was fighting in Syria on a side banned in Russia. The vlogger claimed that the case against him was fabricated and that he had never been to Syria. In 2019, the Speaker of the Chechen Parliament, Magomed Daudov, announced that the case against the blogger had been dropped.

Tumso’s father, Umalt Abdurakhmanov, was once sentenced to death for fighting against the Soviet regime, which was later commuted to a long prison term. He worked in the government of Ichkeria, which declared independence from Russia, and was wounded in the First Chechen War while fighting Russian troops.

Since fleeing Russia, Tumso Abdurakhmanov has regularly and harshly criticized Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and his entourage on his YouTube channel, garnering hundreds of thousands of views.

Abdurakhmanov called the Kadyrovites to a public dialogue. In a debate with them, many loud statements were made. In July 2017, Abdurakhmanov’s videos on the Abu-Saddam Shishani channel began receiving hundreds of thousands of views.

Vlogs featuring high-ranking officials from Chechnya became particularly popular. On several of them, he speaks on the phone with Magomed Daudov, an influential speaker of the Chechen parliament, nicknamed “Lord”. The most popular video on his channel today — more than 5.5 million views — is called “A Conversation with Kadyrov’s Lord.”

But in March 2019, the situation changed, says the “Caucasian knot”. Daudov declared Tumso Abdurakhmanov a blood enemy due to criticism of Akhmat Kadyrov – father of Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya’s first ruler after the end of the republic’s war of independence.

Daudov explained that this was not a threat, “but (we) do not allow anything to be said. Poland [where the vlogger was at the time] is not such a distant place. And there is not a single remote place, in all available places we will call him accounting, with the permission of the Almighty,” said Daudov.

Chechen blogger Tumso Abdurakhmanov was killed