The ongoing criminal case against Chechnya’s murderous anti-LGBTQ campaign in Russia

March 16, 2017 

Maxim Lapunov, a Russian citizen working on Chechnya as an events planner, is detained for 12 days and tortured by state security forces on account of his homosexuality.   

March 28, 2017

Lapunov is released and warned not to reveal his ordeal.   

October 16(?), 2017

Lapunov, joined by the Russian LGBT Network and the Russian chapter of the Committee Against Torture, files a criminal complaint in Russian courts seeking to have his captors brought to justice. Of the hundreds or more of LGBTQI people who have been victimized in Chechnya, Lapunov is the first individual to bring a formal challenge to Chechnya’s declared campaign to “cleanse” the region of LGBTQI people.   

October 20, 2017

A preliminary examination of Lapunov’s complaint by the Russian Investigative Committee results in a refusal to open an investigation into his claims.

October 20, 2017 to November 26, 2018

Courts in Essentuki and Stavrapol reject Lapunov’s appeals, meaning that no investigation of his charges would be undertaken.

December 20, 2018

The Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE) issues a report substantiating Lapunov’s claims, calling disappearances and extrajudicial killings “standard practice," and demanding that Russia open “an inquiry into the actions of the government of the Chechen Republic towards [LGBT] persons in general, as well as a criminal case on the alleged violations of the human rights of [Maxim] Lapunov in particular.”

October 16, 2019

Having exhausted domestic remedies, lawyers for Lapunov submit his claims to the Strasburg-based European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), touching off an investigation.

March 12, 2020

The ECHR gives Moscow until this date to answer the charges.