An Ingushetia resident was convicted for a comment on a Chechen Telegram channel.
A court sentenced an Ingush resident to a fine for a comment on a Telegram channel belonging to a Chechen opposition movement.
The convicted Ingush resident is 23 years old. His criminal prosecution was based on materials from the republic's FSB department, and the case was heard by the First Western District Military Court in St. Petersburg.
According to the prosecution and the court verdict, the young man published a comment “justifying the actions of a militant” – Amirkhan Gurazhev, a member of a banned international terrorist organization, the Ingushetia newspaper reported, citing the FSB.
On March 3, 2024, during a counterterrorism operation in Karabulak, Amirkhan Gurazhev and five others were killed: Zelimkhan Tsuroyev, Magomed Barkinkhoyev, Tagir Tsuroyev, Mikail Tutayev, and Bers Chemurziev. Security forces declared the dead to be militants of the Islamic State, a terrorist organization banned in Russia. The "Caucasian Knot" has prepared a report "How the special operation in Karabulak was carried out."
The comment, according to the publication, was published "in the open Telegram channel of NIYSO" - a Chechen opposition movement that was declared extremist in the fall of 2025 and banned throughout Russia.
The court fined the Ingushetia resident 500,000 rubles, finding him guilty of justifying terrorism via the internet (Part 2 of Article 205.2 of the Russian Criminal Code, the maximum penalty is five to seven years in prison).
According to the verdict, which has already entered into force, the young man is prohibited from publishing any appeals or materials online for two years. Caucasian Knot has not yet received any comments from the convicted man or his lawyer regarding the sentence.
"Caucasian Knot" reported that courts in southern Russia regularly sentence local residents to prison terms for social media posts under the statute of justifying terrorism online. It is impossible to determine the actual number of such sentences, as not all cases of justifying terrorism are included in public court records.
At the end of April, investigators in Ingushetia completed their investigation into a resident of the village of Psedakh, accused of participating in an armed group, illegal possession of weapons, and supplying food to Amirkhan Gurazhev's group. At the end of April, the Southern District Military Court also sentenced three residents of Ingushetia to long prison terms, whom security forces considered accomplices of the militants killed in Karabulak: Mikail and Adam Tsuroev received 12 and 13 years in a maximum security prison, respectively, and Tamerlan Khashagulgov received 14 years.