The Pavlohrad City District Court of Dnipropetrovsk region on November 11, 2024, sentenced a “Kadyrovite” to 11 years of imprisonment for torturing a village head in the occupied territory of Luhansk region.

What is known about the perpetrator

Yusupov Olkhazur Lechiievych (born 04.05.1974) is a native of the village of Gerzel in Chechnya. At the time of the crime, he was a serviceman of the special rapid response unit “Akhmat” within the troops of the national guard of russia and held the position of commander of a consolidated unit.

In the case materials, he is also referred to by the call sign “Yakub”.

Circumstances of the crime

On April 12, 2022, in the temporarily occupied village of Makiivka, Svatove district, Luhansk region, Yusupov, at the head of a group of occupiers, broke into a private house where the village head lived with her husband.

During an illegal search, the “Kadyrovites” found photos with Ukrainian Armed Forces servicemen on the victim’s computer. Because of this, Yusupov personally struck the woman three times with his hand on the face and head, accusing her of sabotage activities and cooperation with the Security Service of Ukraine.

On Yusupov’s order, the victims were blindfolded and taken to the occupiers’ headquarters set up in the building of the Makiivka gymnasium.

The woman was demanded to give testimony about participants of the ATO and the Joint Forces Operation and to disclose the location of Ukrainian flags she had hidden before the arrival of the russians. The interrogation was accompanied by beatings with a metal-plastic pipe on the arms, legs, and back. The woman was also tortured with electric current, and Yusupov threatened her with a knife and promised to cut off her head.

To intimidate her even further, Yusupov ordered that her husband be brought into the room where she was being tortured. He stated that she was a saboteur and would now be shot, told the couple to say goodbye, and sent the husband home. There, his Citroen car keys were taken, which Yusupov later personally used.

After that, the victim continued to be beaten with electric current and a pipe, after which she was handcuffed to a radiator in the assembly hall.

At around 20:00 the same day, Yusupov released her, issuing an ultimatum: by April 14 she had to collect information about all patriotically minded residents of the community, otherwise she would be killed.

The next morning, the couple managed to escape from the village through gardens and fields to territory controlled by Ukraine.

Verdict

During the investigation, both victims and another witness independently identified Yusupov in photographs, including those taken from a video in a Telegram channel where he introduced himself as “commander of the consolidated unit Yakub”. оперативні means established his full personal data, his place of registration in Chechnya, his russian passport number, and his affiliation with the SOBR “Akhmat” unit.

The court concluded that the collected evidence is “convincing, clear and consistent”, which made it possible to find Yusupov guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt”.

Yusupov was found guilty under Part 2 Article 28 and Part 1 Article 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. The sentence of 11 years of imprisonment was delivered under a special court procedure (in absentia).

The verdict entered into legal force on December 12, 2024.

The number of the criminal proceeding in the Unified Register of Pre-Trial Investigations is 42022130000000109.