Masked men whisked away the family of a Russian whistle-blower and then burned down their home in the North Caucasus region of Chechnya, according to media reports.
Ramazan Dzhalaldinov, who was not in Chechnya at the time, had recently complained to President Vladimir Putin about corruption in the region.
Dzhalaldinov, currently in the neighboring Russian region of Daghestan, said in a video on the website of the Chernovik newspaper on May 13 that masked men entered his house overnight and took his wife and three daughters away in a car, telling them that they were in danger.
The men, he said, then left them several kilometers away, saying that their house was in flames and warning them not to make any complaints.
When Dzhalaldinov's wife and daughters returned home by foot they found their house severely damaged by fire.
Dzhalaldinov, an ethnic Avar, had to flee Chechnya after he uploaded a video on the Internet on April 14 in which he urged Putin to personally intervene in a row in his home village of Kenkhi, where he said residents were forced to pay bribes to local authorities.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on May 13 that, if the reports about the men burning down Dzhalaldinov's house were true, law enforcement would intervene.
