Human rights defenders demand inquiry into the murder of the “Ingushetia.Ru” owner
Caucasian Knot

Russian and Ingush human rights organizations have voiced in favour of prompt investigation into the circumstance of Magomed Evloev’s murder. Demands are also expressed to entrust the case to federal, not local, inspectors.

Human Rights Watch also calls to investigate into the circumstances of the death in Ingushetia of Magomed Evloev, manager of the oppositional website “Ingushetia.Ru”.

“Evloev is a well-known figure, perhaps, the main oppositional figure in Ingushetia. His death under such suspicious circumstances can’t but cause questions,” said Tatiana Lokshina, deputy director of Moscow office of Human Rights Watch, the “Interfax” reports.

Radio Liberty reports that Alexander Cherkasov, a member of the Board of the Society “Memorial”, has noted that human rights activists had repeatedly stated that extrajudicial executions are a practice in Ingushetia. People are not detained, they are murdered, Mr Cherkasov has added.

Aslambek Apaev, expert of the Moscow Helsinki Group for Northern Caucasus, has stated in his conversation with the “Caucasian Knot” correspondent that the murder of Magomed Evloev, owner of the website “Ingushetia.Ru”, is a challenge to the whole human rights movement in Russia, having added that, in his opinion, this was a customized political murder.

The “Mashr” human rights organization has conducted its investigation into the circumstances of Evloev’s death. Magomed Mutsolgov, leader of the “Mashr”, has stated that the outcomes of their public inquiry give grounds to assert that two high-ranking Ingushetian officials are directly or indirectly involved in Evloev’s murder:

“If the evidences of eyewitnesses that we have registered are true, there are grounds to suspect President of Ingushetia Murat Zyazikov and Minister of Internal Affairs Musa Medov of participation in Magomed Evloev’s murder.”

As to Magomed Evloev himself, he believed that activation of attacks on the website was caused by publication of the material about beating of President of Ingushetia Murat Zyazikov by Musa Keligov, former deputy plenipotentiary of Russian President for the South Federal District (SFD).

FINROSFORUM

Magomed Yevloev’s presentation at FINROSFORUM, June 2008, in Russian

France 24

The founder of a website and vocal critic of the Kremlin’s policies in the Caucasus died Sunday from a bullet wound to the head while in police custody, Interfax reported, quoting prosecutors.

Magomed Yevloyev ran the website ingushetiya.ru, a major source of information in the region, and was a prominent opponent of the pro-Kremlin president of Ingushetia, Murat Zyazikov.

Prosecutors have opened a preliminary investigation after Yevloyev was shot in a police car in Narzan, the capital of volatile Ingushetia, a mostly Muslim region that borders Chechnya.

The prosecutor’s office spokesman Vladimir Markin said “an incident” took place after Yevloyev was taken into a police car “resulting in a shooting injury to the head and he later died in hospital”, Interfax reported.

The website meanwhile reported that Yevloyev was killed after police arrested him in Narzan.

“Magomed Yevloyev was arrested today in Ingushetia and was killed”, said a report posted on www.ingushetia.ru.

The website is among the most visited for news on Ingushetia and had openly criticised the Ingush president who had often threatened to shut it down.

Ekho Moskvy radio separately quoted local Ingush opposition activist Magomad Khazbiyev as saying that the website founder was arrested at gunpoint after his arrival in Narzan.

Yevloyev arrived on a flight that was also carrying the Ingush president.

“Yevloyev was arrested as he stepped off the plane,” Khazbiyev said.

Russian justice authorities had ordered in June that the site be shut down, saying it was disseminating “extremist” views.

Moscow had also blocked access to the site late last year after it called for protests against the local administration which the opposition accuses of corruption and mismanagement.

Ingusetia.ru’s chief editor Rosa Malsagova earlier this month had announced plans to seek asylum in France.

“This was a murder that must be solved,” said Alexander Cherkassov, from the Russian rights group Memorial.

Russian opposition activist Ilia Yashin accused Zyazikov of “being behind the murder” of the website founder, in an interview to Ekho Moskvy radio.

Ingushetia has been grappling with mounting security problems.

While major combat operations against separatist rebels in neighbouring Chechnya have ceased, Ingushetia and other nearby provinces remain plagued by shoot-outs between Russian security services and local guerrillas.

Reuters

Radio Free Europe

NAZRAN, Russia — The owner of an opposition Internet news site in Russia’s troubled Ingushetia region has been shot dead after police detained him, his colleagues said.

Magomed Yevloyev, owner of the ingushetiya.ru website, was a vocal critic of the region’s Kremlin-backed administration, which is accused by critics of crushing dissent and free speech.

Interfax quoted the Russian Prosecutor-General’s Office as saying an investigation into the death had been launched.

A posting on Yevloyev’s site — which has been the subject of repeated official attempts to close it down — said he was shot after police detained him when he landed at Ingushetia’s airport.

It said he was taken to hospital but died from his injuries. The site also called on “all those who are not indifferent” to his killing to gather for a demonstration in Nazran, Ingushetia’s biggest town.

“A preliminary investigation has been launched into the death of M. Yevloyev,” Interfax news agency quoted Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for the investigations unit of the Prosecutor-General’s Office in Moscow, as saying.

Media freedom groups say Russia is one of the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists. Anna Politkovskaya, an investigative reporter who was critical of the Kremlin, was shot dead in 2006 outside her Moscow apartment.

Ingushetia’s Kremlin-backed leader, President Murat Zyazikov, has been struggling to contain a low-level insurgency led by Islamist militants. His critics accuse him of persecuting opposition activists and reporters, an allegation he denies.

Ingushetia is in Russia’s North Caucasus region and neighbors Chechnya, scene of a separatist rebellion that has now been largely quelled.

Zyazikov has criticized the reporting by ingushetiya.ru and brought a court case earlier this year seeking to close it down.

Interfax quoted an unnamed law enforcement source as saying Yevloyev was shot by accident.

“While police officers were attempting to transfer M. Yevloyev to an Interior Ministry office, an incident occurred in which M. Yevloyev received a gunshot wound to the temple area,” the agency quoted the source as saying.

Aslanbek Apayev, a representative of the Moscow Helsinki Group human rights organization, told Reuters that opposition figures in Ingushetia had told him Yevloyev was dead.

“Yes, it is true. People close to the opposition confirmed that to me. I do not know any details,” he said.

The Associated Press
Miami Herald

MOSCOW — The owner of an independent Web site critical of authorities was shot and killed Sunday by police in a volatile province in southern Russia, his colleague said.

Police arrested Ingushetiya.ru owner Magomed Yevloyev on Sunday, taking him off a plane that had just landed in Ingushetia province near Chechnya, said the site’s deputy editor, Ruslan Khautiyev.

Police whisked Yevloyev away in a car and later dumped him on the road with a gunshot wound in the head, Khautiyev said. He said Yevloyev died in a hospital shortly afterward.

In Moscow, Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said in a statement that Yevloyev was detained by police and died in an “incident” while being taken to police headquarters for an interrogation. Markin did not elaborate, saying that a check to clarify the circumstances of Yevloyev’s death had begun. The committee is under the Prosecutor General’s office.

Yevloyev has angered regional authorities with bold criticism of police treatment of civilians in the region. A court in June ordered him to shut his site on charges of spreading “extremist” statements, but it reappeared under a different name.

Khautiyev said that Yevloyev arrived in Ingushetia from Moscow on Sunday on the same plane with regional President Murat Zyazikov. Police blocked the jet on the runway after it landed in Ingushetia’s provincial capital, Magas, entered the plane and took Yevloyev out.

Yevloyev’s death is likely to further stir up passions in Ingushetia, which has been plagued by frequent raids and ambushes against federal forces and local authorities. Government critics attribute the attacks to anger fueled by abductions, beatings, unlawful arrests and killings of suspects by government forces and local allied paramilitaries.

Many in Ingushetia are intensely unhappy with Zyazikov, a former KGB officer and a close ally of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Immediately after Yevloyev’s detention, his Web site urged Ingushetia’s residents to gather outside the headquarters of a leading opposition group.

FINROSFORUM

Magomed Yevloev, owner of the Ingush opposition web site, Ingushetiya.ru, has been killed. He was arrested by police on his arrival at Nazran (Magas) airport today in the afternoon.

The president of Ingushetiya, Murat Zyazikov, was on the same flight. At the airport Zyazikov ordered the police to arrest Yevloev, and he was put in a police car. Yevloev’s body was then delivered to the republican hospital in Nazran, now with a bullet also in his head.

Murat Zyazikov is a former FSB general and a close ally to Vladimir Putin.He is extremely unpopular in Ingushetia, where the violence has grown tremendously during his presidency since 2002, when he was appointed to succeed the popular president Ruslan Aushev.

Owner of the news site Ingushetiya.Ru Magomed Yevloyev was today shot in the head after being arrested by the Ingush authorities. He has passed away in hospital.

NAZRAN, Russia (Reuters) – A senior Russian rights activist said he and a television crew had been abducted and beaten by security agents in the southern region of Ingushetia, just hours before a protest against police brutality.

Read the Reuters article here

ingushetiya.ru 24.11.2007 14:51

In the region of the town bus terminal near the “Ingoil” petrol station where the protesters have moved to, fighting has broken out. OMON and police officers, along with representatives of other law enforcement agencies, have entered the thick of the protest, attempting to disperse it and arrest the participants in the action.

Eye witnesses report that one of the police officers, provisionally identified as an officer of the mobile unit of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Russian Federation, has shot one of the protesters point blank.

ingushetiya.ru 24.11.2007 13:32

Protesters in Nazran have beaten off two more attempts to disperse the protest, undertaken on the command of the chief of the OMON Ministry of Internal Affairs for Ingushetiya Magomed Tsoroyev. He issued orders to his subordinates, demanding the use of firearms against the unarmed people. During the last storm police managed to seize the leader of the Ingush youth organisation “Heritage” Kaloy Akhilgov, who was not taking part in the protest but had driven to the bus terminal to see what was happening.

Information is coming in that the storming groups of OMON and FSB have shot at several civilian vehicles, injuring several people.