Lena Patyaeva mounts a solo picket in Grozny on Thursday. Photo: Slovo Zashchite / Telegram

A friend of a missing Chechen woman believed to have been murdered by her own family in a so-called “honour killing” was briefly detained on Thursday for mounting a solo picket demanding an investigation in the Chechen capital Grozny, North Caucasus human rights group Marem has reported.

Seda Suleymanova, who fled Chechnya in 2022 to avoid an arranged marriage, was abducted from her new home in St. Petersburg and returned to Chechnya against her will in August 2023. There has been no news of her since then, and two separate sources have told human rights group North Caucasus SOS that she may have been murdered by her relatives for her disobedience.

Before mounting her solo protest in Grozny with a handmade sign reading “Where is Seda Suleymanova?”, written in Russian and Chechen, Lena Patyaeva posted a statement on her Telegram channel saying that she was aware of “all the risks” of her actions and that human rights groups had discouraged her from travelling to Grozny for her own safety.

Patyaeva was released within an hour of the initial reports of her arrest. Her release was announced on her Telegram channel shortly after her friends posted a video that she shot at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport before boarding her flight to Grozny on Thursday morning, saying that she had undergone all security checks and did not carry any illegal substances, as the Chechen police have a history of planting drugs on human rights activists to arrest them.

Patyaeva also stressed in her Telegram post that bringing attention to Suleymanova’s case was her “last hope” in finding justice for her friend and called on her followers to share her message. “Seda is a human being, just like you are. She just wanted to live,” Patyaeva wrote.