Investigators from Russia's North Caucasus region of Chechnya have joined an investigation into a recent attack against rights activists and journalists in the neighboring region of Ingushetia.
Chechen Interior Minister Ruslan Alkhanov said on March 15 that his investigators had joined the probe.
On March 9, some 20 masked men with knives and clubs attacked a minibus belonging to the Russian nongovernmental organization the Committee to Prevent Torture as it tried to enter Chechnya from Ingushetia.
The assailants brutally beat the activists and journalists, destroyed their equipment, and burned their minibus.
Two Western journalists, from Sweden and Norway, were hospitalized with injuries sustained in the attack and transferred to their home countries.
Chechnya's Kremlin-backed leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, and his supporters have publicly criticized the Committee to Prevent Torture, which was branded as a "foreign agent" by the Russian government in 2015.