A Chechen journalist, she was arbitrarily arrested in 2004, in Moscow, and sentenced to eight and a half years in the Mordovia penitentiary, despite the mobilization of the media and Russian and international human rights organizations. Released in 2012, after having served this sentence in full, she obtained political asylum in France and recounted her prison experience in a book, published in 2014, Eight and a Half Years! (published by Books).