Uncertainty Prevails Over Prominent Chechen Blogger After Reported Death.

Tumso Abdurakhmanov last YouTube video was posted several weeks ago. (file photo)

Swedish police say they have no new comment on the situation surrounding Chechen blogger Tumso Abdurakhmanov, who colleagues say has disappeared, after separatist leaders said they had been told he is alive and under police protection.

Abdurakhmanov, 36, is said to have been missing for several days when unconfirmed reports emerged on social media on December 1 that he had been killed and his brother was under police protection.

Chechen opposition groups said they were unable to contact the blogger and that his representatives said they had not been in contact with him or his brother.

The 1ADAT channel on December 5 quoted unidentified sources as saying Abdurakhmanov had been shot dead and that his brother, Mukhammad, was under police protection.

However, a spokesman for Chechen separatists living in exile told RFE/RL's Caucasus.Realities on December 9 that Abdurakhmanov was "alive and under the protection of Swedish police."

He gave no evidence to back up the claim, saying that he was citing "his own sources of information."

Swedish police spokesman Irene Sokolow said in response to the claim that, just as with the initial reports of Abdurakhmanov's death, they couldn't confirm the reports or comment further on the matter.

"We have nothing to add," she said.

On December 8, Sokolow said the reports had not led to "any actions" on the part of the Swedish Police Authority.

Abdurakhmanov, a popular YouTube blogger who has been harshly critical of Kremlin-backed leader Ramzan Kadyrov and his government in Chechnya, left Russia in 2015.

He has since been living in Sweden, where he was granted political asylum and survived an assassination attempt in February 2020, when an intruder broke into his home and attacked him with a hammer.

In January 2021, two Russian citizens from Chechnya were handed long prison sentences by a Swedish court after being convicted of attempted murder in the case.

One of the men, Ruslan Mamayev, testified that he had been acting on the behest of Chechen authorities who promised to pay him 50,000 euros ($52,700).

Kadyrov, who has ruled Chechnya since 2007 with a cult of personality around him, is frequently accused by Russian and international human rights groups of overseeing grave human rights abuses including abductions, torture, extrajudicial killings, and targeting the LGBT community.

Several Chechen dissidents and Kadyrov critics have been killed outside of Russia since 2004. Chechen blogger Imran Aliyev was killed in Lille, France, in January 2020, while former Chechen independence fighter Zelimkhan Khangoshvili was shot dead in Berlin in August 2019.

Abdurakhmanov has not posted on his Telegram channel since the evening of November 30. "Normally, Tumso warns when his Telegram channel won't be active, but yesterday he did not," one commentator wrote below the post.

Abdurakhmanov's last YouTube video was posted several weeks ago.