Major opposition leader in Ingushetia Magomed Evloev - murdered by Police - more Putinesque problem solving

Magomed Evloev (Yevloyev) is the owner and operator of http://ingushetiya.ru/, which is an anti Kremlin non Government friendly site - it is managed by an editorial board headed by human rights activist Ibragim Kostoev (and currently is down )- it is not to be confused with the Government site http://www.ingushetia.ru/ set up to mislead people.

Yesterday , August 31, 2008, the police seized Magomed Evloev at the airport outside the capital Magas.

Magomed Evloev was shot whilst the police were holding him. He died soon after in hospital.

Interfax report that Regional prosecutor Yuri Turygin said the journalist tried to take away a police officer's gun and the officer "accidentally" shot him.

Naturally there is little belief that his death was an unfortunate accident. So far the opposition is collecting signatures on a petition calling for withdrawing from Russia if the murder isn’t properly investigated.

Evloev, who spends much of his time in Europe had a rrived for a visit home. Ingushetia’s President Murat Zyazikov (like Putin, a former KGB officer) was also on the plane from Moscow having had meetings with both Putin and Medvedev . The plane landed at 10.30 local time.

Magomed Khazbiev, Chairman of the All-Nation Meeting Organizational Committee and friend of Evloev says President Murat Zyazikov was first off the plane. He stepped into one of the cars waiting for him near the steps .

After he departed .. “ a cavalcade of armoured cars drove up to the plane – 2 UAZ cars and four Volgas. Armed to-the-teeth policemen poured out of the cars. Interior Minister Musa Medov was among them. Having seen Magomed Evloev, the policemen git him and dragged him into the UAZ,” Khazbiev said. (Ulyanovsky Avtomobilny Zavod (Ульяновский Автомобильный Завод) - a type of 4x4 Jeep known as a goat , favourite transport of the secret police.

Apparently things then became violent with Evloev's friends attempting to rescue him breaking glass doors and pushing away airport guards, but without success.

The police fired down a few warning bursts and escaped with Evloev by emergency route.

After leaving the airport, the police divided into two groups, the first heading for Troitskoe village, and the second moving to the Caucasus road, towards Nazran. The opposition followed the Nazran lead, supposing Evloev would be put into detention facilities there.

They caught up with the police near the turn to Nazran, cutting two Volgas from the motorcade by ramming. But Evloev wasn’t there. The opposition fighters pulled policemen out of the cars, beat them and took away their guns and identity papers. “No blood on us; this is none of our doing,” the frightened policemen were crying.

Then the activists decided to drive on to Nazran to attack the police there. However Evloev had been accidentally shot in the car and transferred to the Central Hospital in Nazran but rescuciation and and operation failed to save his life.

Ingushetiya.ru ran a story that the Police shot him and then dumped him on the road with a gunshot wound in the head. Today, more than 1,200 people came out to rally at his funeral, demanding a transparent inquiry into his death. WSJ also run a story based on this.

The Internation Herald Tribune say 1,200 people turned out for the funeral which was surrounded by armed police. The human rights activist Magomed Mutsolgov said on the telephone to AP that some carried banners demanding the resignation of Murat Zyazikov and a fair investigation into Evloev's death / murder.

Mutsolgov believes Evloev was murdered by Ingush authorities as retribution for running an online publication that reported on widespread allegations of abuses, abductions and killings in Ingushetia. In June a court had ordered Yevloyev's Web site Ingushetiya.ru shut for spreading "extremist" statements, but the site reappeared online under a different name.

Kaloi Akhilgov who was Evloev's lawyer, told the Interfax news agency that Evloev was shot point-blank in the head.The Memorial Human Rights Center, based in Moscow, called Evloev's death a murder and "yet another act of state terror."

The RF prosecutors have opened a criminal case on a count of reckless killing.

Reporters without Borders carry the story and condemn the killing of yet another journalist and publisher in Russia - they say that Evloev had been the target of serious threats previously, in October 2007, he accused President Zyazikov on the website of hiring hit-men to kill him. His family has also received threats from Ingush politicians. Fearing that her life was in danger, the website’s editor, Rosa Malsagova, left Russia earlier this month and sought political asylum in the European Union.

BBC ONline report the murder and add that INterfax reports there is persistent low-level insurgency, with regular small-scale ambushes against police and soldiers and the latest incident , on Monday, resulted in 2 policemen killed and 1 wounded in an ambush at a police station in the village of Achaluki.

Things are beginning to go on the boil in Ingushetia

It is now clear that Ingushetiya.ru reported that the unrecognized People’s Parliament of Ingushetiya Mekhk-Kkhel would meet to discuss beginning to collect signatures calling for independence on saturday. Subsequently the site was attacked and removed.

Magomed Khazbiyev's committee had collected more than 80,000 signatures demanding that Moscow replace Zyazikov, and he said on Ekho Moskvy radio station on Sunday that the killing of Yevloyev had radicalized public opinion and was leading ever more Ingush to demand an investigation and think about independence.

Liz Fuller at Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) in a very good, lengthy and detailed history of events entitled "Website Owner's Death Could Prove Point Of No Return For Ingushetia"

She writes ..."Evloev was born in 1971 in Malgobek, in the then-Checheno-Ingush ASSR. He graduated in 1992 from the Saratov Institute of Law, and worked from 1993-99 in the Ingushetian Prosecutor-General's Office and personally secured the release in 1999 of the abducted brother of leading LUKoil official Musa Keligov. In 2001, Evloev went into private business, and established ingushetiya.ru in 2002.

The first and principal cause they championed was the aftermath of the 1992 conflict over Ingushetia's territorial claim on the Prigorodny district of neighboring North Ossetia, a conflict in which over 600 people died and thousands of Ingush were forced to flee. Many of them still live in temporary accommodation; ingushetiya.ru has systematically chronicled, and expressed unequivocal support for, their efforts to persuade the Russian leadership to allow them to return home."

If you want to read in detail of the way Zyazikov's bully boys, kidnap, torture and blow people up try this article in this February's Novayagazeta..."Magomed Aushev (the nephew of Magomed Evloev's brother in law) was tortured with electric shock and beaten while being hung up under the ceiling. Then they brought him to the forest and put two flak jackets on him “saying that the dead body will last longer in flak jackets and later it will be possible to sell it to relatives for burial”.
“They discussed among themselves ‘Shall we sell him?’ But then they decided not to return me and said ‘let’s kill him by ourselves’”.

After that the brutes shot into the flak jacket put on Magomed, brought him out of the pit and made him write the agreement to cooperate with the enforcement agencies. He also had to sign some receipt of money received in amount of 35,000 rubles – the officers seemed to need justification for some spent public money. Aushev was threatened that even babes would be killed in his family if he blabbed out."

"It seems that the brutes were too angry to kill the prisoners immediately. They tortured them several hours, asking who advised Magomed to write a letter to the Republic Prosecutor. The walls in the cell, where the brothers were kept, were covered with bloody signatures by people who had been missing before in the Republic.

The brothers’ documents and clothes were burnt. They were pushed into the car and brought to the mountains to turn into “snickers”. That’s when a dead body is tied around with explosive and gets blown up. And then animals eat up the pieces of human flesh so that there is no possibility to establish whose dead body it was. The brothers had their ribs broken and fingers burnt with electric shock. In the mean time, the executors were deciding who of them would shoot."

Sue Fuller suggests that ..."Paradoxically, Yevloyev's killing presents Russian President Dmitry Medvedev with a golden opportunity to reverse the damage to his image resulting from Russia's military incursion into South Ossetia last month: he could fire Medov and Zyazikov, and appoint Afghan war hero Ruslan Aushev(who preceded Zyazikov) to prevent the instability in Ingushetia spiraling out of control. Aushev has not commented publicly on Yevloyev's death.