Kyrgyzstan's State Committee for National Security has detained Mansur Movlayev, a Russian citizen renowned as both an athlete and an outspoken critic of Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed authoritarian ruler of the North Caucasus region of Chechnya.
The arrest was made as part of a counterterrorism operation on August 20 at an airport in the Yssyk-Kul region of southern Kyrgyzstan, where Movlayev was intercepted while allegedly illegally attempting to enter the Central Asian nation.
The State Committee on National Security has not given further details on the arrest, but Kyrgyz law enforcement had labeled Movlayev an "adherent of radical ideology believed to be connected with international terrorist organizations in Syria.”
Movlayev's lawyer in Kyrgyzstan, Ilgiz Nasyrov, confirmed his client's detention and that a court hearing on his pretrial regime is expected to be held at the Pervomaisky District Court in Bishkek.
Meanwhile, the National Center for the Prevention of Torture said its representative met with Movlayev on August 21.
"Mansur Movlayev said that if he is extradited from Kyrgyzstan, he will definitely be tortured [wherever] he would be sent," Bakyt Rysbekov, head of the center, told RFE/RL.
Authorities accuse Movlayev of being associated with a "dormant cell of previously convicted individuals tied to the terrorist underground” and that he intended to conduct a series of robberies targeting affluent citizens in Kyrgyzstan and then funnel the proceeds to international terrorist groups.
Movlayev, 28, was sentenced to three years in prison in 2020 on a case he claims was fabricated. He was released on parole in 2022 and then rearrested in Chechnya, but escaped to Kyrgyzstan and was wanted by Russian authorities.