Insurgency-Related Incidents Reported in Dagestan, Chechnya and Kabardino-Balkaria

In Dagestan, the deputy director of the Makhachkala Industrial-Economic College, Nazhmudin Abdulkerimov, was found shot to death yesterday (December 1) in his car in the village of Semender. A law-enforcement source said the body had a gunshot wound to the head. A source in the Investigative Committee was quoted as saying that an unidentified gunman had shot Abdulkerimov in his Toyota Corolla, killing him on the spot. The attacker then escaped. Investigators found seven 9 mm shell casings and two 9 mm bullets at the scene of the crime. A Dagestani Interior Ministry source was quoted as saying that Abdulkerimov was previously deputy director of the Makhachkala Industrial-Economic College but more recently worked simply as a teacher at the college (www.newsru.com, www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, www.vz.ru, December 1).

On November 29, police found three members of a family dead in Kaspiisk. According to the Investigative Committee, the bodies of those slain – a 44-year-old resident of the Dagestani city along with his 43-year-old wife and 23-year-old daughter – were found with gunshot wounds in an apartment building in Kaspiisk. While authorities claimed the family owned a furniture store, relatives denied that, saying that the wife and daughter knitted items that the husband then sold at a market, and that the family lived very modestly. A niece of the wife said that gold jewelry had been stolen from the apartment (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, November 29, December 1).

On November 28, police in the Dagestani city of Khasavyurt detained a 29-year-old local resident suspected of membership in “illegal armed formations” – i.e., rebel groups – in the republic. According to the Dagestani Interior Ministry, the detainee issuspected of having worked together with a resident of the village of Chontaul between March 2009 and September 2011 to transfer money to, and buy cellphones and medicine for, militants in the republic’s Tsumadinsky district. According to the ministry, the Chontaul resident, who has also been detained, is suspected of having participated in attacks on law-enforcement personnel (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, November 28).

On November 27, one man was killed and another injured when the improvised explosive device they were allegedly trying to place at a shop in the Dagestani city of Buinaksk prematurely exploded. According to the Dagestani Interior Ministry, the IED detonated with the force of 100 grams of TNT, and the shop was only slightly damaged (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, November 27).

On November 26, the head of the Bureau of Technical Inventory in Kaspiisk, Efendi Shikhbabaev, was seriously wounded when a bomb blew up his Hyundai Sonata while he was driving in the Dagestani city. Shikhbabaev was hospitalized in critical condition, while another person who was in the car at the time of the blast was not hurt. That same day, police in Dagestan’s Kayakentsky district discovered an arms cache in a wooded area that included a RGD-5 hand grenade, 27 rounds of 5.45 mm ammunition, a kilogram of an explosive mixture consisting of aluminum power and ammonium nitrate, 300 grams of gunpowder, bolts and screws (which are often used in IEDs). Police on November 26 also seized weapons and ammunition from six people across the republic, including residents of Makhachkala and several Dagestani villages (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, November 26).

On November 24, unknown gunmen fired a grenade launcher into the home of the head of the Interior Ministry department for Dagestan’s Kizilyurt district, Col. Gadzhi Karagadzhiev. The grenade did not detonate and therefore caused little damage. No one was hurt in the incident (www.regnum.ru, ITAR-TASS, November 25).

Meanwhile, Dagestan’s Interior Minister, Abdurashid Magomedov, denied on November 30 a claim that law-enforcement officials had admitted to participants in a mass protest against police abuses that abductions, torture and extra-judicial persecution occur in Dagestan. Magomedov said that the claim, made by Dagestani lawyer Ziyavudin Uvaisov, was “baseless” and “unfounded.” Magomedov insisted that law-enforcement agencies investigate all complaints of abductions by law-enforcement personnel – who, he said, carefully follow the proper legal procedures for conducting investigations and “under no circumstances overstep them” (RIA Dagestan, November 30). On November 25, an estimated 2,500-3,000 people took to the streets of Makhachkala to object to growing police abuse (EDM, November 28).

On November 25, police in Chechnya’s Achkhoi-Martan district discovered an arms cache that included more than 1,200 rounds of ammunition, eight kilograms of plastic explosives, four anti-tank grenades, nine hand grenades and binoculars. According to the republic’s Interior Ministry, the arms cache belonged to Said-Khasan Musostov, a Chechen rebel killed in a special operation in 2005 (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, November 26).

Also on November 25, staffers of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and Interior Ministry branches in Kabardino-Balkaria discovered an IED factory in the republic’s capital, Nalchhik. According to the FSB, among the items seized were a metal tank filled with about 30 liters of aluminum powder and 32 bags of saltpeter, each weighing around 50 kilograms, along with batteries, industrial detonators, ball bearings and nails. Three Kalashnikov automatic rifles and two hunting rifles were also found (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, November 25).

Kavkazsky Uzel reported today (December 2) that in the 11 months of this year between January 1 and November 30, 683 people have been killed and 522 wounded in the armed conflict in the North Caucasus. According to the website, the largest number of casualties was in Dagestan, where 373 people were killed in 313 wounded, followed by Chechnya, where 92 were killed and 110 wounded, followed by Kabardino-Balkaria, where 116 were killed and 42 were wounded. They were followed by Ingushetia (69 killed, 34 wounded), North Ossetia (16 killed, nine wounded), Karachaevo-Cherkessia (15 killed, nine wounded) and Stavropol Krai (three killed and five wounded) (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, December 2).