The videos feature clues that they may have been shot in Russia, including furniture reportedly manufactured in Russia and a can of the energy drink Drive Me, which is sold in Russia - but not in Germany - by global beverage giant PepsiCo. But he is shown speaking in a room with the curtains drawn, and there is nothing indicating his actual location. In the videos, which regional state television in Chechnya portrayed as proof that Bakayev was alive and well, a man resembling the singer claims that he is in Germany and arrived in the country in mid-August.
"Isn't there anyone in the village, any man in the family, who can admit: 'We did this'? They know full well who their relative was."īakayev's family says he was last seen on August 8 in Chechnya's capital, Grozny, and the mystery over his fate deepened after two bizarre YouTube videos appeared the following month purporting to show him in Germany. "His family couldn't stop him, and then called him back home, and his brothers, it seems, accused him of being one of those," Kadyrov continued, clearly alluding to homosexuality. "His relatives, who didn't keep an eye on him and were ashamed that he was one of them, now say that Kadyrov took him," he told an audience of uniformed security forces, adding that there was no "evidence" of state involvement. The Chechen leader, whom rights groups have accused of widespread human rights abuses, also rejected accusations that the singer may have been killed by regional authorities. Kadyrov's suggestion that Bakayev, 25, was killed by family members due to his sexual orientation was the first time a senior official in Chechnya has publicly conceded the singer may no longer be alive. They diverge from previous accounts of Bakayev's possible fate voiced by senior Chechen officials, who have said he likely fled to Europe or was in hiding after falling into debt.
The Kremlin-backed leader of Chechnya has suggested that a Chechen singer believed to have been swept up in a purge targeting gay men in the southern Russian region was killed by family members over his sexual orientation.Ĭhechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov's remarks, carried by regional state television on January 17, were his first public comments on the August disappearance of singer Zelimkhan Bakayev in the mainly Muslim region.