Today after 10 a.m. the administration of the Shaly District Department of Internal Affairs of Chechnya released three Russian human rights defenders detained yesterday:  Dmitriy Yegoshin (Regional public organization “Human being and Law”, Yoshkar-Ola), Roman Veretennikov (NGO “Mothers in support of the detainees, indictees and convicts”, Krasnodar), Vladislav Sadykov (Bashkirian representation of INGO “Committee against Torture”). Sadykov, Yegoshin and Veretennikov have arrived in Grozniy.

Three human rights defenders are lawyers of the Joint Mobile Group (JMG) of Russian human rights defenders that has been working in Chechnya since November 2009 investigating the allegations of torture, abduction and notorious murders in that Russian region.

Human rights defenders were detained during the meeting with unknown citizen of Chechnya, who promised to give valuable information about abduction of one of the citizens of Shaly region.

The detainees spent the night in different rooms of the Department of Internal Affairs; in the morning law enforcement agents suggested that the human rights defenders should write a note stating that none of them had any claims against the police.

In accordance with information of human rights centre “Memorial”, the human rights defenders have been detained for 15 hours. Their detention was not executed in accordance with the law.