The Malgobek department of Russia’s Investigative Committee in Ingushetia responded to a complaint by local resident Ibragim Tochiev with a quote from Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder and first chairman of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (VChK, also known as the Cheka), one of the predecessors of the Soviet state security agencies.
‘The fact that you are free is not your merit, but our failure’, the letter sent to Tochiev in response to his complaint about the investigator’s inaction reads. The human rights organisation Team Against Torture (‘Komanda protiv pytok’, ex-Committee Against Torture) published a screenshot of the document. It is not known who prepared and sent the letter.
Tochiev challenged the decision not to open a criminal case following his complaint about the alleged abuse of authority by security personnel. On 24 June, security forces arrived at his home in the village of Verkhniye Achaluki in Malgobek district.
According to Tochiev, the officers did not identify themselves or explain why they had come. They tied him and his brother, Tamerlan, up before taking them outside. Ibragim alleges that several officers beat him while others held him down. He was then taken to the Malgobek district police department, where, he says, he was threatened and held for about a day. Medical professionals subsequently diagnosed him with a concussion and bruising.
The administrative case brought against Tochiev contains a different account of the incident. According to this version, Tochiev loudly objected to the officers’ actions, used obscene language and called them ‘enemies of Allah’. This behaviour was cited as the reason for the use of force. Tochiev also alleges that the security forces took flash drives containing footage from CCTV cameras in the yard, as well as the phone of his sister, who had filmed the incident.
In August, a court found Tochiev guilty of disobeying police officers. He links the prosecution of his family to a long-running dispute over their house and land, as well as to their complaints about law enforcement officers.
The Tochiev family has been in dispute with the authorities over property in Verkhniye Achaluki for several years. According to the local independent media outlet Fortanga, in 1989 the family purchased a house and plot on Sovkhoznaya Street from a mobile mechanised construction unit. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the paperwork was delayed, and the family moved into the renovated building in 1994.
In 2019, the family’s head, Alauddin Tochiev, registered the property in his name. Local authorities later claimed that the house and land belonged to the republic. According to the administration, the building had previously housed a school, and the family had occupied and converted it into a home. The Tochievs insist that they have documents confirming their ownership rights.
In 2024, the family succeeded in having an eviction ruling overturned and the case sent back for reconsideration. In March 2025, the Malgobek City Court partially upheld the prosecutor’s claim, ruling that the family had no rights to the house or land, but refused to order their eviction. In December of the same year, the Supreme Court of Ingushetia upheld the decision. The prosecution, republican ministries and village administration had failed to provide conclusive evidence that the disputed land and building belonged to the state.
A criminal case involving theft and arson was subsequently opened against Tamerlan Tochiev. He spent about a month in a detention facility before being placed under house arrest.
OC Media was told by Team Against Torture that the criminal case against Tamerlan Tochiev is still under investigation. However, because he has a psychiatric condition that makes detention in a pre-trial detention centre unsuitable, he was released subject to a travel restriction.
Law enforcement agencies in Ingushetia have previously used quotations from literary figures to illustrate their publications. Before 2020, the press service of the Ingushetia Interior Ministry published materials featuring quotes from Honoré de Balzac, Victor Hugo, and Leo Tolstoy.
‘Iron Felix’ and the rehabilitation of Soviet history
Felix Dzerzhinsky was a revolutionary of Polish origin, a Soviet state official and the founder of the first iterations of the Soviet security service. Established in December 1917, the VChK was one of the first agencies of the Soviet political police. In Soviet historical tradition, Dzerzhinsky became known as ‘Iron Felix’.
The VChK and the agencies that succeeded it — the OGPU (‘Joint State Political Directorate’), NKVD (‘People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs’) and KGB (‘Committee for State Security’) — were part of the history of Soviet political repression. The modern Federal Security Service (FSB) is regarded as the institutional successor to this tradition.
The phrase ‘The fact that you are free is not your merit, but our failure’ is often attributed to Dzerzhinsky, although there is no documentary evidence that he actually said it.
In 1958, a monument to Dzerzhinsky was erected in Moscow’s Lubyanka Square, in front of the building that housed the Soviet state security agencies. It was created by sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich and architect Grigory Zakharov. Following Dzerzhinsky’s death in 1926, the square had for a time borne his name.
On 22 August 1991, following the failure of the attempted coup in the Soviet Union, the monument was dismantled. Protesters had gathered around it and attempted to topple it, after which Moscow authorities decided to remove it. The sculpture was later transferred to Muzeon Park of Arts on Krymsky Val, where it remains today. The possibility of returning the monument to Lubyanka Square has been raised repeatedly in subsequent years.
In May 2026, exiled opposition journalist Mikhail Zygar reported, citing sources, that a decision had been made to return the monument to the square after all.