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Slayings of innocent people continue in Ingushetia

By Ruslan Elmurzayev for Prague Watchdog

INGUSHETIA, February 2 – The campaign of murder which in the view of many Ingush is aimed by the Russian leadership against the Ingush nation as such, shows no sign of letting up despite efforts by local and foreign human rights defenders.

Three young men have been killed in the republic during the past three days. Typically, all were ambushed and shot in the back without warning. None were on any federal or other wanted list for suspected involvement in terrorist activities.

In front of many witnesses in Nazran on February 1, officers of the Federal Security Service (FSB) fired several bullets from an automatic weapon into the back of unsuspecting 21-year-old local resident Yusup Chapanov as he returned from Friday prayers at a mosque.

At Chapanov’s funeral on February 2 his next of kin told Prague Watchdog’s correspondent that as far as they knew Yusup had been mistaken for a man on the federal wanted list.

The slain man’s relatives intend to obtain justice through all the channels open to them. “We didn’t spend 21 years looking after him and bringing him up so that someone could kill him by mistake. For us it’s important that those responsible are punished, so that ‘mistakes’ of this kind in Ingushetia are not repeated,” Magomed, the slain man’s uncle, told Prague Watchdog’s correspondent.

Earlier, on January 30, Ramzan Nalgiyev (23) and Dzhabrail Mutsolgov (24), were ambushed by Russian soldiers near the village of Surkhakhi and were literally riddled with bullets. Next, armoured military armoured vehicles barricaded the road, and no local police were allowed access. Then the soldiers blew up the young men’s car, declaring them to be terrorists of long standing.

When reporting the murders, the FSB, the Ingush prosecutor's office and the media invariably distribute the standard message that "terrorists involved in a number of terrorist acts have been destroyed while offering armed resistance."

The same information, following the standard pattern, was disseminated on television by Ingushetia’s Moscow-appointed prosecutor Yuri Turygin after the shocking murder on November 9 of a 6-year-old boy, Rakhim Amriyev, in the village of Chemulga, Sunzhensky district. Russian soldiers broke into his home in the early hours of the morning and shot him, afterwards placing a sub-machine gun beside the boy’s corpse (see details).

Earlier, citing a statement by Ingush interior minister Musa Medov, news agencies and television stations reported that another terrorist, Apti Dalakov, had been killed in the town of Karabulak September 2, 2007 while offering armed resistance. However, Medov gave no details of the murder, which took place in full view of dozens of people who saw the FSB officers shoot the Ingush lad and place a grenade in his hand.

So great is the anger caused by the Russian military among the local population that when on February 1 the Russian special services tried to seize a young man and abduct him, the Ingush men present at the scene immediately attacked the heavily-armed soldiers with their bare fists and took the man back.

According to the MAShR human rights organization, since 2002 there have been 160 abductions and around 600 slayings – which for a small mountain nation of 480,000 is a very high figure.

The current actions of the law-enforcement agencies have united human rights defenders, government officials, religious leaders and many others in an effort to save this small but proud nation. Everyone is doing what they can. Ingush members of parliament and human rights workers are sending appeals wherever possible, both to the Russian government and to the international community, and the religious authorities are making requests in the mosques. And the guerrillas fight.

Yusup Chapanov, killed in Nazran on February 1

(Translation by DM)

(T)

  RELATED ARTICLES:
 · The hunt for Abdul-Malik's gang continues (Grozny-inform, 4.2.2008, in Russian)
 · Details of the "elimination of two terrorists" near Surkhakhi (Ingush Prosecutor's Office, 1.2.2008)
 · Tension continues in Ingushetia (PW, 23.11.2007)
 · Ingushetia at the crossroads (PW, 6.9.2007)