Security Operations Conducted in Ingushetia and Dagestan

Kavkazky Uzel reported on April 25 that Russian and local security bodies conducted a large-scale “zachistka,” or security sweep, in the settlement of Voznesenovskaya in Ingusehtia’s Malgobeksky district on April 22 and 23. The website quoted Voznesenovskaya residents as saying that all points of entry into and out of the village were blocked by security forces, who deployed armored vehicles and went house-to-house to check the identification papers of residents. According to the Information Center of the Council of Non-Governmental Organizations, a Nazran-based human rights group, security personnel also searched homes. No one was detained in the operation. The security operation was reportedly part of an ongoing search for Uruskhan Zyazikov, the 72-year-old uncle of Ingush President Murat Zyazikov who was kidnapped in March (Chechnya Weekly, March 29). The kidnapping was widely denounced in Ingushetia.

An officer with the anti-organized crime department of Ingushetia’s Interior Ministry, Daud Fargiev, was shot to death by unknown persons while driving in Nazran on April 23. According to Kavkazky Uzel, investigators believe the attack could either have been an act of personal revenge or connected with Fargiev’s professional activities.

Kavkazky Uzel reported on April 19 that the offices of ten non-governmental organizations in Nazran were closed more than a month ago following an incident in which someone fired a rocket-propelled grenade that landed in the courtyard of a private home located next to a cottage housing offices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

In Dagestan, two suspected rebels were killed and two policemen wounded during a special operation in the village of Pervomaiskoe in Dagestan’s Khasavyurt district, Interfax reported on April 23. A source in the republic’s law-enforcement bodies told the news agency that the slain suspected rebels were members of the Shelkovskoi jamaat who had been involved in attacks on federal, Dagestani and Chechen Interior Ministry personnel.

Meanwhile, Kavkazky Uzel reported on April 18 that policemen in Makhachkala had seized merchandize from the “Sunna” shop, which specializes in Islamic literature. The store’s owner, Makhmud Kurbanov, told the website’s correspondent that the police said the seized literature and laser discs would be examined to determine whether they included “Wahhabi agitation and calls for kindling inter-religious or inter-ethnic hatred.” Earlier this month, Dagestani President Mukhu Aliev called on the republic’s media to prepare more publications of an “anti-terrorist and anti-Wahhabi nature” (Chechnya Weekly, April 19).