Briefs

– Reputed Chechen Crime Boss Reportedly Abducted

Kommersant reported on April 14 that a reputed Chechen crime boss whose partner has been linked to the murder of Novaya Gazeta correspondent Anna Politkovskaya and Russian Forbes editor Paul Klebnikov was abducted in Moscow earlier this year. The Moscow Times reported on April 15 that Movladi Atlangeriev, founder of the so-called Lazanskaya crime group, was seized at gunpoint by two unidentified men as he left a restaurant in central Moscow on the evening of January 31 and has not been heard from since. Together with Khozh-Akhmed Nukhaev, another reputed Chechen crime boss, Atlangeriev, known alternately by the nicknames “Lord,” “Lenin” and “The Italian,” is thought to have organized Moscow’s fragmented Chechen groups into a unified gang, the Moscow Times reported. Authorities have accused Nukhaev of ordering the 2004 murder of Klebnikov and the 2006 murder of Politkovskaya. In an interview published in Izvestia on April 3, senior Investigative Committee official Dmitry Dovgy accused Nukhaev and self-exiled businessman Boris Berezovsky of ordering Politkovskaya’s murder. Last year, however, Berezovsky accused Atlangeriev of attempting to carry out a plan to assassinate him in London on the orders of Russia’s special services.

– Dagestani Rebel Killed in Special Operation

A leader of one of Dagestan’s “illegal armed formations,” Ismail Yangizbiev, was killed during a special operation in the republic’s Khasavyurt district on April 13. “Yangizbiev had been on the Federal Wanted List for several years for committing grave crimes, including assassinations of police officers and terror acts,” the acting head of the press service of Dagestan’s Interior Ministry, Mark Tolchinsky, told Itar-Tass. The news agency, citing Dagestan’s Interior Ministry, reported that Yangizbiev and two associates were stopped during a special operation aimed at rebel gunmen in the villages of Pokrovskoye and Kondauraul. The three reportedly began firing at the police when their car was stopped on the road between the two villages and then tried to escape into a nearby forest. Yangizbiev was killed in the shootout while the two other gunmen managed to escape, Itar-Tass reported.