‘I trusted my husband’

‘It felt like I’d entered another world’

Saida first met Akhmed, her husband, a few years ago. He had long courted her, before eventually asking for her father’s consent to the marriage. Saida said Akhmed seemed like a devoted husband. But not long after they married and moved into an apartment together in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, she discovered that he’d been sending intimate messages to another woman. Akhmed would also often spend hours on his phone in the bathroom and Saida occasionally found unfamiliar strands of hair in their bed. They argued, reconciled, and he promised to change.

“I saw him, with my own eyes, in the city with a girl, and he’d still say, ‘Nothing happened,’” Saida explains. “Otherwise, he seemed like a decent husband: he didn’t hit me, looked after me, treated me kindly. From the outside, he looked like an educated, well-mannered, completely normal person.” Soon after they married, she got pregnant. Saida hoped that having a child would give them a fresh start.

One night in the spring, Saida recalls, Akhmed spent so long on his phone that he fell asleep with it in his hands. Suspicious, she took his phone and managed to unlock it. In his photo gallery, she found a large number of explicit images of women. Some had been sent to him. Others he had saved from women’s online lingerie reviews and sent to other men, claiming they were someone he knew.

“I couldn’t understand where all these naked women were from. Then, I started opening each conversation. It felt like I’d entered another world. Secret chats, apps, dating sites,” Saida says.

She then found images of herself. There were photos of her sleeping in her underwear, as well as others taken while she was under the covers. Akhmed had been sending them to other men across Dagestan, who urged him to move the camera closer, lift the covers, and touch her.

“I trusted my husband. I felt safe sleeping in my underwear. What kind of doubts could I have had? I would’ve never imagined that he was next to me, taking pictures of me for other men,” Saida explains.

In several chats, Akhmed’s contacts asked him to let them come over and rape Saida while she slept. He told them he was preparing to make it happen. Novaya Gazeta Europe has obtained screenshots of these conversations.

“I got scared. What if someone had already come over? What if they’d drugged me? I hadn’t noticed or felt anything that made me think I’d been given pills or something else. I can’t say that it happened, but they were arranging all sorts of things. After something like that, you begin to think back to each day and question yourself,” Saida adds. Her story echoes the case of Gisèle Pelicot, a French woman whose husband spent nearly a decade secretly drugging her and inviting strangers to their house to rape her.

A prisoner in her own home

The night she found the messages, Saida sent herself several of the photos, chats, contacts and audio recordings. She also quickly forwarded a few screenshots to her friend. In a state of shock, she woke Akhmed and demanded answers, throwing whatever she could find at him. He didn’t deny anything. He asked for forgiveness and swore he’d change. Then he grabbed Saida’s phone out of her hands and restored it to factory settings, erasing everything she had saved except for the screenshots she’d managed to send to her friend.

Akhmed told her he wouldn’t let her leave and then hid the keys. Unemployed at the time, he almost never left her by herself. Saida soon realised that she would have to “win his trust” and pretend to calm down so he’d let her go. But nothing changed.

“I could barely sleep. I’d walk around the house fully dressed,” she recalls. “My stomach kept cramping and my head was spinning. He was fairly calm, never laying a hand on me, but I knew what he was capable of. I kept thinking: he could slip me something. I just tried to look calm so I could get out of there in one piece.”

After a week, Saida decided to call emergency services. Officers arrived fairly quickly. Saida packed her things and left the apartment.

They were then both taken to the police station, where officers looked through Akhmed’s phone, found the images of Saida, and read his texts. Akhmed even confessed in front of them. Then the officers gave Saida a sedative to calm her down before she was asked to file a police report. When she finished, they told her that it likely contained errors because she was so distressed. They suggested she sign four blank sheets of paper and promised they’d rewrite her report correctly later.

“I re-read my statement. I don’t think there were any mistakes, but they told me, ‘You’re nervous, you’ve taken a sedative.’ And I believed that nonsense. I signed four blank pages, and didn’t even photograph the first report,” recounts Saida.

Both Akhmed and Saida were released a few hours later. She never received any update on the case.

‘Keep quiet’

After leaving Akhmed, Saida moved in with her mother. Fearing that her family would kill Akhmed and then end up in prison, she only told them about the cheating.

“They told me, ‘Well, so what, he cheated, no big deal. You can put up with it for the sake of the child. Why did you even marry him, if you’re going to divorce him so quickly?’ I still didn’t tell them the truth. Knowing my family, he would’ve been a dead man. But I needed him to face legal punishment,” says Saida.

When she told Akhmed’s relatives the real reason she went to the police, they blamed her, blocked her number, and said that all he needed was to speak to a psychologist. In the months that followed, Saida barely left the house and stopped speaking with friends. Her pregnancy was difficult and at times she didn’t even have the strength to shower.

Saida attempted suicide. She was hospitalised and began seeing a therapist.

Then, in the summer of 2026, Saida came across an Instagram reel posted by Makhmud Magomedov. He called himself a lawyer and had nearly 200,000 followers. She hoped he might be able to help her, so she sent him a message. “I was so deeply depressed, I wasn’t speaking with anyone. And then I saw that video clip. I thought maybe this was my chance, maybe this person would help,” recalls Saida. “Well, I was wrong.”

She met with Magomedov in a park and told him what happened, showing him the evidence she had saved. After promising to help, Magomedov called Akhmed and confronted him, demanding that he pay Saida the 150,000 rubles (€1,599) owed to her as mahr, an obligatory wedding gift given by the husband to his wife.

But Saida didn’t expect that to be the end of it. She had made it clear to Magomedov that she wanted to make the story public so other women could avoid Akhmed. Instead of offering any legal assistance, Magomedov simply told Saida not to “publicise” the story and just “keep it quiet.”

‘No justice’

Around a month later, Saida’s friends started sending her Magomedov’s most recent reels, where he recounted the story of a woman whose husband had photographed her sleeping, sent the photos to other men, and owed her 150,000 rubles (€1,599). Only a few small details differed.

In one video, Magomedov explained what he advised her: “There’s a lot that can be done legally here, but I recommended she not open this subject or disclose this guy’s personal information.” His Instagram account has since been deleted after many users reported him.

Responding to criticism of how he handled the case, Magomedov argued that publicity would turn “a personal tragedy into a public scandal” and that he didn’t want to “ruin [the man’s] life.” The husband, he said, had only “slightly damaged her psyche.”

Novaya Gazeta Europe spoke with several women who had approached Magomedov for legal help. They said he agreed to assist them, but later began pressuring them into intimate exchanges and, in one case, sent them explicit photos of himself. Some never received the assistance they had paid for.

In the Dagestan Bar Association’s registry, Magomedov’s status is listed as “terminated” as of 1 August 2026. The registry does not specify the reason for or date of termination. When Novaya Gazeta Europe contacted Magomedov, he claimed Saida agreed with his advice and was grateful for his help. He called allegations that he had sent sexual messages and images “slander” and said he’d sue. He continued to refer to himself as a lawyer.

Saida, now seven months pregnant, lives with her mother, far away from her husband. He’s promised to help buy a stroller, crib and other necessities for the child. So far, little has come of these promises. Out of everyone in her family, she only told her mother the full story.

Now, Saida says she’s doing much better. “The first three or four months were the toughest,” she recalls. “It felt as though there was no justice in the world. I wasted time contacting the police department, and then I wasted time with Magomedov.”

“I wanted people to recognise my husband’s face, so other girls would know to stay away from him. I wasn’t the only one on his phone,” says Saida. “If it wasn’t me, then it’d be the next girl.”

Aida Magomedova