“It would be good if I killed”

The head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, said that “it would be nice” if his son Adam killed Nikita Zhuravel, who was arrested in connection with the burning of the Koran. A fragment of the annual live broadcast with the participation of Kadyrov Sr. was published by the channel “Ostrozhno, Novosti”.

Adam Kadyrov, who was then 15 years old, beat Zhuravel in the Grozny pre-trial detention center in August. At the end of September, his father published a video of the beating. The head of Chechnya once again stated that he considers his son’s concession correct. At the same time, according to him, he initially thought that his son would be held accountable for beating Zhuravel. “I was tormenting him that a criminal case was opened for the beating. They say, he will be in prison for six to eight years. He replied that he considers it an honor to be in prison,” Ramzan Kadyrov is quoted as saying by Chechnya Segodnya. It was officially announced that Adam Kadyrov will not be punished in any way, since he has not reached the age of accountability – 16 years.

“To punish [Адама]? Why punish? Because he is an agent [арестованного Никиту Журавеля] beat? It would be good if he killed him on the spot,” said Ramzan Kadyrov. He also expressed his satisfaction with the fact that after the beating of Zhuravel, Adam Kadyrov was presented with a number of awards, and the awardee commented on criticism with the words “The dog is barking, the caravan is moving.”

• After the beating of Zhuravel, Adam Kadyrov received the title of hero of Chechnya, the position of head of the security department of the head of the republic, the highest orders for services to Tatarstan, Karachay-Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria, the Chechen order “Daymehkan Siy” (“Pride of the nation”) and religious orders “For merits before the Ummah” and “For serving the religion of Islam” 1st degree, the medal “Labor Valor of Russia” and “For contribution to the development of the Russian Special Forces University” 1st degree. Some of the awards listed above he was formally not supposed to receive due to his age.
• Adam Kadyrov’s photo appeared on the website of the Russian administration of occupied Donetsk in the section “Honorary citizens of Donetsk”. Representatives of the Russian authorities in Donetsk, however, said that the site had been hacked, and subsequently Kadyrov’s photo was removed from it.
• On Wednesday, the Vysaitovsky district court of Grozny held the fifth hearing in the case of the burning of the Koran by a student from Volgograd, Nikita Zhuravl, at which five Chechen imams, recognized as victims, spoke. They declared about “huge moral harm to all Muslims” and deep personal feelings because of what happened. A total of 13 imams are victims of the case of insulting the feelings of believers.
• On May 21, Nikita Zhuravel, a 19-year-old resident of Volgograd, a native of Ukraine, who was suspected of burning the Koran, was detained. On the instructions of the head of the Investigative Committee of Russia, Alexander Bastrykin, Zhuravel’s case was transferred to Chechnya, explaining this step by “numerous appeals from residents of the Chechen Republic with a request to recognize them as victims.”
• At the trial, Zhuravel asked for forgiveness from the Muslims and declared that he found himself guilty of burning a book sacred to believers, but he had no motive for a gross violation of order. He added that the people with whom he agreed to burn the Koran were not found, and he allegedly did it for the sake of ten thousand rubles, which in the end he did not receive.