New Ingush Rights Council Flooded with Complaints

Interfax reported on December 12 that the new Human Rights Council set up by Ingush President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov had received complaints from over 150 people during its first few days of operation. The council’s chairman, Azamat Nalgiyev, told the news agency that most of the petitions were about abductions and killings in the republic, while others were from citizens seeking protection from abuses by state officials and still others were from people illegally fired from various agencies and organizations. He said some of the problems had been quickly solved.

Meanwhile, Ingushetia’s insurgents continued their campaign of violence aimed at various targets across the republic. On December 14, bomb disposal experts defused a powerful improvised explosive device discovered on a road on the outskirts of Nazran and another found near a shop in the city of Malgobek, Interfax reported. The opposition Ingushetia.org website reported that a shop that sells alcohol in Malgobek was hit by an explosion on December 14 that seriously damaged the shop but caused no casualties.

Unidentified gunmen fired on a car carrying policeman in the village of Ordzhonikidzevskaya in Ingushetia’s Sunzha district on December 13. Interfax reported that two policemen were wounded and hospitalized. Earlier that day, the news agency reported that an unidentified gunman, apparently using a sniper rifle, had wounded a policeman near the Sunzha district police building in the village of Troitskaya, while in a separate incident, unidentified attackers fired at a police station on the outskirts of Nazran. No one was hurt in the second incident, and the attackers escaped. Also on December 13, a serviceman with an Ingush Interior Ministry’s special forces unit, Police Warrant Officer Dzhabrail Tsechoyev, was shot and serious wounded on the Caucasus federal highway in Nazran, RIA Novosti reported. That same day, a resident of the village of Dolakovo was shot dead by unknown attackers in his car in the center of Nazran.

On December 12, a car in which Akhmed Khashagulgov, the head of the Investigative Committee department in Malgobek, was blown up, wounding Khashagulgov. Kavkazky Uzel reported that on the same day, a large explosion went off near the main market in the city of Karabulak.

On December 11, unknown gunmen fired on policemen in the village of Troitskaya, but no one was hurt in the attack, RIA Novosti reported.

The press service of the investigations department of the Investigative Committee for Ingushetia reported on December 27 that the number of attacks on law-enforcement personnel and military servicemen in the republic increased more than two times since the beginning of 2008 compared with the analogous period in 2007. The department reported that there were 167 such attacks during the first eleven months of 2008—a 125 percent increase over the first eleven months of last year.  It also said that there have been 68 murders in Ingushetia since the start of the year— 12 more than during the same period in 2007, constituting a 31.4 percent increase.