Anti-Kremlin website founder dies in police custody

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 http://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.

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Owner Of Russian Opposition Website Killed

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.

Deputy says Russian police kill Web site owner

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.

Magomed Yevloev killed

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.