Briefs

No Let Up in Violence in Dagestan

Two police officers were killed in central Dagestan on May 15, Reuters reported. Interfax quoted Dagestan’s Interior Ministry as saying that saying a vehicle with three officers was shot at during a routine patrol of the village of Gubden. Two were killed and one was wounded. As Reuters noted, last October attackers burned down the house of Gubden’s police chief about 10 days after unknown gunmen opened fire on Russian riot police in the village, wounding two. In September 2007, the kadi [Islamic judge] of a mosque in Gubden was killed when unidentified gunmen fired on him with assault rifles as he was going to the mosque for morning prayers. The Sharia Jamaat claimed responsibility for that assassination (Chechnya Weekly, October 4, 2007). On May 11, a police officer was shot dead and another injured in a drive-by shooting at a police post near the village of Dzhemikent in Dagestan’s Derbentsky district, Kavkazky Uzel reported. Also on May 11, police in Dagestan discovered and defused two bombs, RIA Novosti reported. One was discovered near the village of Shamkhal-Termen in Dagestan’s Kizylyurt district while the second was found in Makhachkala, the capital.

Former Chechen Presidential Candidate Abducted

Nikolai Paizulaev, a Chechen poet and former republican presidential candidate, was kidnapped in Grozny on May 14. Kavkazky Uzel reported on May 15 that Paizulaev received a telephone call on May 14 from someone who said they had information about the whereabouts of his 7-year-old daughter, who was abducted last month.