The director of Chechnya’s state television has issued death threats against the “enemies” of Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov.
Chingiz Akhmadov, head of the Grozny State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, said in an Instagram video on June 21 that he stands “with Ramzan Kadyrov.”
“If someone needs to be killed, someone who deserves death, then we will kill. If it is necessary to say a word, then we will say the word,” he said.
Akhmadov said any “enemy of Ramzan Kadyrov is the enemy of the Chechen people,” and personally his enemy.
Under Kadyrov, Chechnya’s security services are notorious for carrying out human rights abuses against political opponents, including torture, abduction, and extrajudicial killings.
Kadyrov, who on numerous occasions has threatened to kill or jail his critics, has previously declared that death threats and intimidation are a part of “Chechen ethics.”
