Briefs

Aide to Ingushetia’s Chief Prosecutor Murdered

Interfax reported on February 24 that Akhmed Torshkhoev, a senior aide to Ingushetia’s chief prosecutor, was shot and killed in Nazran. A source in the Investigative Committee of the federal Prosecutor General’s Office for Ingushetia told the news agency that the car in which Torshkhoev and his wife were traveling came under automatic weapons fire and that he died of gunshot wounds while his wife was seriously wounded. Interfax reported that on February 21, a sniper fired at policemen who were following up on reports that an explosive device had been discovered in Nazran’s Gamurzievo municipal district. One officer was shot and wounded in the leg.

Polish Police Arrest Suspect in Murder of Ex-Kadyrov Bodyguard

Austrian prosecutors announced on February 23 that Polish police had arrested a suspect believed to have taken part in last month’s killing in Vienna of a former bodyguard to Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, Umar Israilov. The Moscow Times on February 24 quoted Gerhard Jarosch, spokesman for prosecutors in Vienna, as saying that the suspect is a 31-year-old Russian citizen of Chechen descent who had lived in Austria as an asylum seeker “for some time.” However, Jarosch said that it was unlikely the suspect had personally killed Israilov, who had accused Kadyrov of torture and murder and filed a lawsuit against the Chechen president at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Israilov was shot dead after being chased through Vienna by two men on January 13.