Ingushetia Web Site Owner Killed by Russian Police

Another way to get rid of all opposition - label them "terrorists." The true terrorists are running things from the Kremlin. Hey, Kirsan, real safe region you chose to hold the Women's World Chess Championship in! Story from Theage.com.au Russian police kill anti-government website owner September 1, 2008 The owner of an independent website critical of authorities was shot and killed by police today in a volatile province in southern Russia, his colleague said. The killing of Ingushetiya.ru owner Magomed Yevloyev could incite tensions in the province of Ingushetia west of Chechnya, which has been the site of frequent attacks on police and other officials. Police arrested Yevloyev today, 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 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 Yevloyev arrived in Ingushetia from Moscow 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 fuelled by abductions, beatings, unlawful arrests and killings of suspects by government forces and local allied paramilitaries. In June, Human Rights Watch accused Russian security forces of widespread human rights abuses in Ingushetia, saying it has documented dozens of summary and arbitrary detentions, acts of torture, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions. It said officials in Ingushetia persecuted peaceful Muslims and government critics, marginalised opposition groups and stifled independent media. The New York-based rights group warned that the "dirty war" tactics against insurgents would likely further destabilise the situation in Ingushetia and beyond in the North Caucasus. Many in Ingushetia are intensely unhappy with Zyazikov, a former KGB officer and a close ally of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. An anti-government rally in Ingushetia in January drew hundreds of people who clashed with police. Immediately after Yevloyev's detention, his website urged Ingushetia's residents to gather outside the headquarters of a leading opposition group. AP

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Coverage of the story from The Wall Street Journal:

A Muckraker's Slaying Leaves Russian Province Fearing Crackdown By ALAN CULLISONSeptember 1, 2008; Page A20

MOSCOW -- For months, the owner of a muckraking news Web site had stayed away from his home after receiving warnings to tone down his critique of Kremlin-backed authorities in the Russian province of Ingushetia, friends said.

But Magomed Yevloyev finally boarded a plane to return to Ingushetia this week, and there he encountered a surprise: The local governor was riding on the same plane, a few seats away from him in business class.

When the plane landed in Ingushetia, the governor was met by a Mercedes that whisked him away. And Mr. Yevloyev was arrested at the airport, deposited into a jeep and shot in the head. Local authorities say the killing was an accident.

Mr. Yevloyev's killing Sunday shocked the southern region of Ingushetia, where the local opponents of the Kremlin are already anxious because of years of kidnappings and violence that they blame on federal authorities. Now, with Russia projecting its might outside its borders with its military foray into Georgia, fears abound that the Kremlin's rule within Russia, and specifically in the restless North Caucasus, could get tougher.

Authorities say Mr. Yevloyev was shot in the head during a struggle, after he tried to grab a policeman's gun as they were bringing him to the local capital to be questioned about a bombing there.

The governor, Murat Zyazikov, issued a statement promising an investigation. "I personally didn't know him," Mr. Zyazikov said. "I think in this case what we're talking about is a human tragedy."

Over the past four years, Mr. Yevloyev had turned his Web site, Ingushetiya.ru, into the main source for news in Ingushetia, a predominantly Muslim province bordering on war-ravaged Chechnya. Mr. Yevloyev had emerged as a vociferous critic of Mr. Zyazikov, a security-service veteran. Mr. Yevloyev charged that Russia's FSB, the successor to the KGB, was operating with impunity in Ingushetia, rubbing out opposition members with hit squads that carried out extrajudicial executions.

Mr. Yevloyev's death casts a spotlight on a region where ethnic strife and brutal crackdowns by security services remain the norm despite Russia's claims that it has subdued Islamic separatists in Chechnya. Hundreds of demonstrators marched Monday in the Ingush capital to protest what they called his murder, demanding the ouster of the governor, Russian news agencies reported.

In an interview last year, Mr. Yevloyev said he started the news service as a hobby, when he worked in Ingushetia's prosecutor's office and began posting news items on a Web page. Mr. Yevloyev often gathered his real-time reports of firefights, killings and arrests from freelance contributors and residents who phoned in, and he carried with him four mobile phones to support the service. One mobile phone was for text messages, a second was for socializing, and a third was for business, he said. The fourth mobile phone, he said, was for "special friends."

Mr. Yevloyev claimed that some of his Web site's reports derailed some official abuses before they could come to fruition. In 2006, he said, contributors helped him document how Russian federal authorities had sent a special "liquidator" squad to Ingushetia that was preparing to assassinate people who had been identified as insurgents. The squad left Ingushetia, he said, after his Web site posted several items about its movements.

Ingushetia also been a hotbed for separatism. In June, Human Rights Watch accused Russian security forces of widespread abuses in the region against local Muslim groups as well as opposition activists and media. The group said it documented dozens of summary and arbitrary detentions, acts of torture, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions.

Mr. Yevloyev's Web site was a chronicler of many of the alleged abuses. The government tried to shut it down by labeling it as "extremist" under Russia's toughened antiterror laws.

Last year, Mr. Yevloyev's site focused on Russia's parliamentary elections and accused the governor of overseeing vote fraud to curry favor with the Kremlin. The site posted observers at polling stations who estimated that turnout was about 8% -- far below the official tally of the regional government, which said that 98% voted overwhelmingly for the Kremlin-backed party.

The next week, the governor told a Russian magazine that the election-fraud allegations were "nonsense." He played down the kidnappings and killings, saying they only got attention because of an information war being waged against his administration by "those who want to weaken Russia."

With pressure rising this year, especially after a court ruled the site extremist, Mr. Yevloyev had stayed away from Ingushetia, according to his lawyer, Kaloy Akhilgov.

Mr. Akhilgov he said he spoke to Mr. Yevloyev by phone Saturday night, trying dissuade him from returning to Ingushetia. "I told him not to go there, that anything could happen to you," he said. "He said he wasn't a coward, and that his parents were there and his brother and sister and needed to see them." Aboard the flight to Ingushetia, Mr. Yevloyev and the governor didn't speak to one another, said Vasily Likhachev, a member of Russia's parliament from Ingushetia who spoke to Mr. Zyazikov on Monday. Mr. Zyazikov and Mr. Yevloyev "did indeed fly together on the same plane, but there were no arguments or any kind of conversation between them," he told the Interfax news agency.

An entourage of friends were awaiting Mr. Yevloyev at the airport in Ingushetia. The governor got off first, and was whisked away in a Mercedes, said Magomed Khazbiyev, a personal friend of Mr. Yevloyev and a leader of opposition to the local government. Then Mr. Yevloyev was escorted to an armored jeep of Russia's Interior Ministry, he said. A short time later, he turned up at a local hospital with a single bullet wound through the head, he said.

Mr. Khazbiyev said that Mr. Yevloyev was in police custody for 20 minutes at most.