Career
She is usually referred to just as Hadijat. Hadijat is also the titular "angel" in the 2008 book Angel of Grozny: Orphans of a Forgotten War by Åsne Seierstad. Gatayeva, who had served as a young field nurse for the separatist forces in the First Chechen War, opened-up a makeshift orphanage for street children in 1996.
After the beginning of the Second Chechen War in 1999, for a period of time she had operated her orphanage in a refugee camp in the neighbouring republic of Ingushetia.
She was forced to return to destroyed Grozny after electricity and water were cut off from the camp after the ascent of Murat Zyazikov in 2002. Eventually, she moved from Russia to Kaunas in Lithuania.
The arrest was based on European Arrest Warrant from Lithuania. The asylum against the political persecution by Lithuanian authorities was granted in May 2012.
