Medov Removed as Ingushetia’s Interior Minister

Russian Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliev removed Musa Medov as Ingushetia’s interior minister on November 24. Medov, along with Murat Zyazikov, who was removed as Ingushetia’s president late last month (North Caucasus Weekly, October 30), were accused by the republic’s opposition party of involvement in the August 31 murder of Magomed Yevloev, founder of the independent Ingushetiya.ru website (North Caucasus Weekly, September 5). Ingushetiya.ru’s successor website, Ingushetia.org, reported on November 25 that Medov has been replaced by Colonel Ruslan Meiriev, a former employee of the police department in the Siberian town of Nizhnevartovsk. Newsru.com on November 25 quoted sources in the federal Interior Ministry as saying that Medov had been given a job in the ministry’s apparatus in Moscow—which is in effect a promotion. The website reported that Meiriev had been introduced to the staff of Ingush President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov and Deputy Russian Interior Minister Colonel-General Arkady Yedelev.

Newsru.com reported that Yevkurov had named Abubakar Geliskhanov as Ingushetia’s new agricultural minister, Ruslan Amerkhanov as the republic’s new construction minister and Lemka Izmailova as its new education minister. Yevkurov also appointed a third deputy prime minister in the republic—Magomet-Sali Aushev. The website reported that the new heads of Ingushetia’s veterinarian department and roads department were also appointed and that the current chairman of the republic’s forestry committee was reappointed to that post.

Ingushetia.org reported on November 20 that Ibragim Yevloev, the former head of the Ingush Interior Minister’s bodyguard unit, had been flown to Moscow and was being kept in the federal Interior Ministry’s Kometa (Comet) Hotel. The website reported that Yevloev has been accused of the unpremeditated murder of Ingushetiya.ru’s founder, Magomed Yevloev, and the investigators in Ingushetia believe he fired the fatal shot to the website founder’s head. Ingushetia.org noted that the former Interior Ministry chief bodyguard had signed an agreement not to leave the republic while Magomed Yevloev’s death was being investigated and thus had violated the law by flying to Moscow.

On November 12, Ingushetia’s Nazran district court ruled that Magomed Yevloev’s incarceration by the police at the airport in the republic’s capital of Magas shortly before he was killed in August 31 had been illegal. On November 18, the collegium of Ingushetia’s Supreme Court ruled that a district had acted unlawfully by refusing to change the designation of Yevloev’s killing from accidental death to murder.