MOSCOW, July 4 (RAPSI) – Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office has ordered the Prosecutor of Chechnya to check up investigation into Oyub Titiyev, the director of the Chechen Republic’s office of Memorial NGO, who stands charged with illegal possession of drugs, the statement published on the website of Russia’s Presidential Council for Human Rights reads.

Earlier, the Human Rights Council forwarded a consulting conclusion on the case to the Prosecutor General’s Office. In the document the advisory body called attention to “incomplete and ineffective” check of the fact of Titiyev’s arrest and unreasonable investigators’ refusal to institute a criminal case upon the human rights advocate’s complaint over falsification of investigative documents.

Chairman of the Presidential Council for Human Rights Mikhail Fedotov has repeatedly spoken in favor of carrying out the investigation into Titiyev by the federal authorities. Among the reasons supporting the Council’s stance, Fedotov specifically noted the need to check the inference that drugs were planted in the activist’s car and investigate a series of attacks against Memorial offices in Ingushetia and Dagestan.

According to the Interior Ministry of Chechnya, on January 9, police officers stopped Titiyev’s car during a preventive control operation. As police officers searched the car, a package filled with a plant-based substance smelling of marihuana was found. The package was then sent for analysis while the head of the office was brought in for a medical examination. Titiyev was put in detention.