“They threatened to cut off their heads”: new details of the flight of Dagestan girls from Russia

It seems that all this is fiction and cannot possibly be true. But the girls were preparing to escape, collecting evidence of manifestations of medieval cruelty.

On the border between North Ossetia and Georgia, they were not allowed to leave for 10 and a half hours, they demanded permission to leave from their relatives, although all the girls are adults. “But what about Russian laws?” the fugitives shouted. “You understand, this is the Caucasus, but there are moral prohibitions.”

It was only thanks to the intervention of human rights activists, including members of the HRC (including the author of these lines), that the girls were able to leave the country.

The four girls are sisters Khadijat and Patimat Khizriev, as well as their second cousins ​​Aminat Gazimagomedova and Patimat Magomedova. They lived in a small Dargin village, where, according to their stories, women have no rights.

“All girls aged 4-5 are subject to mandatory female circumcision,” says one of them. We have gone through this process.

In the modern medical world community (including in scientific works, in textbooks on medicine), this term is not used, it was deliberately replaced with “mutilation of the female genitals” or “mutilation of the female genital organs.” Thus, the doctors emphasized that the procedure involves the amputation of the penis (and it cannot be compared with male circumcision.

Ten years ago, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution to put an end to this barbarism. And in Russia, it should be noted, even a criminal case was initiated under the article “infliction of harm to health” against doctors who agreed to carry out such a procedure at the request of the girls’ parents.

In the case of the four sisters, there is every reason to initiate such a case, as well as to conduct a large-scale investigation. If all the women in this village really underwent a barbaric procedure, this indicates the need for urgent state intervention.

“The village lives according to strict traditions,” confirms human rights activist Leysan Mannapova (by the way, she herself was “hunted” after she helped the girls). – They have a woman can not leave the house without a man. So they try to get her married as soon as possible so that someone other than her father and brother is responsible.

There they especially make sure that the girl performs namaz. If they think that she missed or somehow did the prayer wrong, then a beating follows. In general, beating is a common educational practice. Parents, older sisters and brothers beat.

“Look what my mother and brother turned me into,” Patimat Magomedova shows photographs in which her whole face is covered in blood and a bruise, and her hands are a mess.

According to the girls, they beat them with their hands and feet, but not only. Relatives could, for example, “poke” them with the tip of a knife, crucify them on the floor. And it wasn’t just the men. Aminat, who does not have a father, said that her mother tortured her – among other things, she put a loaded gun to her temple.

All four sisters say that they were imprisoned because they were forbidden to study after the 7th grade. With horror, the girls waited until they were married to unloved relatives. Khazizhat Khizrieva has already been “married” to her cousin. She even received a wedding gift – 50 thousand rubles, which they later tried to impute to her as theft.

This money helped the girls buy tickets to Moscow. The plan was this: wait until the youngest turns 18 and go to the capital, where to hide in a shelter, to get a passport.

“At their place of residence, a woman can apply for a passport only with the permission of her husband, and only if she comes with him to the MFC,” says Leysan. – So there are few women who, in principle, have this document.

Before leaving Dagestan, all four girls wrote farewell letters to their loved ones, asking them not to look for them and leave them alone, to give them the opportunity to start an independent life without domestic violence and strict religious rules.

In Moscow, the girls turned to a center that provides assistance to victims of domestic violence, and already its employees placed them in a shelter.

And then something amazing happened. The mother of one of the girls came to Moscow, came to this center and applied, posing as a victim of domestic violence. She wanted to be allowed to live in a “safe house” (hoped that this way she would find out the address where her daughter was). Employees asked her for at least some documents that would confirm her story, but the woman began to behave strangely. As a result, they took a picture of her and sent the photo to the girls. They identified a relative.

“It’s the first time we’ve had anything like this,” says an employee of the center. – Usually relatives put on the wanted list and just call the centers. And here is such a sophisticated move …

When we “identified” the fake victim of domestic violence and refused to help her, the head of our center began to receive threats.

Meanwhile, the girls received passports and went to North Ossetia, from where they were going to get to Georgia. They understood that in Russia their relatives would simply not let them live, and possibly even kill them. Why did they think so? The girls play audio-recorded threats from loved ones. Of the most impressive in the bad sense of the word – the words of the mother of one of them that she would cut off her daughter’s head and hang it for everyone to see in the village in order to “wash away the shame” in this way.

Russian border guards did not let the girls through at the Upper Lars checkpoint. They moved the sisters to a special detention facility, where they began to ask questions about whether they had the approval of their relatives to cross the border.

Leysan, who arrived, rightly asked the border guards questions about whether Russian legislation was in force here. The girls spent a long time explaining to people in uniform that they should not stay in Russia, that their Dagestan relatives would kill them anyway (even if not immediately, then later). The border guards thought for a long time what to do in this difficult situation: on the one hand, there were no reasons to keep the fugitives, on the other hand, how calls from relatives and some persons from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Dagestan would follow.

Further events unfolded like in a blockbuster. The mother and brother of one of the girls arrived at the checkpoint. Surprisingly, the border guards let them into the closed part, where only detainees can be.

“I’m not talking about the fact that those who arrived did not have passports and, in principle, they should not have been at the checkpoint,” Leysan continues. – The policemen who came on a call to attempt suicide helped us (the girls said they would commit suicide as soon as they were handed over to their relatives).

Police officers with machine guns became a human shield, they did not allow relatives to come even close to the girls. This saved us. But in general, everything that happened looked terrible. The girls were hysterical.

Waiting for a decision at the checkpoint was delayed. Members of the HRC intervened (Natalya Evdokimova and the author of these lines). We demanded a reaction from the Commissioner for Human Rights in North Ossetia and the Prosecutor General’s Office. The first one answered us that allegedly there was a statement from relatives to the police about the theft of 50 thousand rubles. However, even if this is the case, until a criminal case is initiated, there are no formal reasons for detention.

Be that as it may, after more than 10 hours of torment at the checkpoint, the girls were let through. They were very worried that they would not be accepted in Georgia. But there they were expected (thanks to publicity), they immediately offered help and protection. Now all four live, as they themselves put it, in a “crisis apartment in a special location.” Feel good.

“We are safe, we are very grateful to everyone who helped us,” the girls say with tears in their voices. “We don’t even have words to describe the horror we endured. I want to believe that everything is over. For the first time in a long time, we are not afraid and can sleep peacefully.

“It’s too early to rejoice,” says David Isteev, head of the crisis group that is helping girls now. “We are working on moving them out of Georgia. Much more fear now for Leysan Mannapova. There were threats against her. For relatives, she is the only person they can reach. And such attempts are already being made. For a religious village in Dagestan, what happened was literally a disaster.

“I understand all this very well,” says Leysan herself. – When one of the journalists got through to the father of the Khizriev sisters, he said that “this woman”, that is, me, was to blame for everything.

My brother, who was at the checkpoint, angrily called me a provocateur. In their view, I am the organizer of the escape. This is not true. I saw the girls for the first time just the other day. When I was asked to defend them (in case of possible danger when crossing the border, they needed a lawyer), I represented the risks. And yet she agreed, because everything that happens is wildness. Now they tell me that some Dagestan diaspora is looking for me in Moscow… I have a lot of business in the capital, my clients are there. And I certainly did not prepare for emigration.

An interesting point. At the checkpoint, the girls managed to write four statements to the police about death threats. But it is not known whether they were registered, because they were not given the voucher that was due in this case.

The girls are going to leave Georgia because they think that relatives can get to them sooner or later. They want to go to a country about which no one will know anything. Will the girls ever return to Russia? I want to believe. But for now, they don’t want to think about it themselves.