In February 2000, during the Second Chechen War, she and her son Idris were arbitrarily detained by the Russian forces and taken to the unofficial detention centre known as Chernokozovo, a "filtration camp" infamous of torture, rape and other abuses.
Her friends helped her go to Turkey, but once her health was slightly better, she went back to Chechnya and began collecting evidence of crimes committed against civilian population of the republic, submitting it to United Nations and international human rights organizations.
In February 2003, Bitiyeva had been part of the group of women that demanded the opening of a mass grave site discovered near the settlement of Kapustino.
[3][4][5] On May 21, 2003, in the middle of a night, a group of over ten unidentified Russian-speaking special forces troops (four of them masked) arrived in Kalinovskaya in two UAZ-452 minivans.
[1][3] Bitiyeva had filed a complaint against Moscow with the European Court of Human Rights in 2000 for abuse while in detention (this was then-second ECHR case from Chechnya), but she was murdered before the ruling was issued.