The source of Aushev’s fears was backed by colleague Musa Pliev, aid to the Ingush president and representative of the family of another slain oppositionist. According to Pliev, the current murder investigation must change its focus to consider a political motive. The five possible motives outlined by authorities, which Pliev called “absurd and baseless,” include criminal associations, promises of aid to demonstrators who faced possible prosecution, and an extramarital affair. Pliev asserts out that Aushev was never associated with any criminals, and that the demonstrators Aushev supposedly promised to help have long since been freed. The woman he is accused of having an affair with is a cousin, and was a passenger with Aushev when their car was sprayed with machine gun fire on Sunday.

Ingush President Yunus-bek Yevkurov blames the murder on the republic’s security forces. In an October 26 interview on the Echo Moskvy radio station, Yevkurov said that he took the news of the murder “with severity,” that the crime aimed to destabilize the republic, and that it had been directed against him personally. The president has pledged to put all possible resources behind the investigation.

According to Yevkurov, the leaders of the republic had nothing to do with the murder.

While Aushev supported Yevkurov’s efforts, he had lost faith in the president months before he was killed.

According to Aushev’s writings, President Yevkurov “has fallen under the influence of the security forces, which have continued these six months [since he assumed power] to abduct, torture, and kill people…not a single time did he speak of how the tyranny of the security forces was inadmissible, but with their own actions they made clear who was in charge.”

Tatyana Lokshina, Deputy Director of the Human Rights Watch Moscow bureau, agrees that the murder calls into question Yevkurov’s ability to protect the pluralism in the republic that he supports. She stated that citizen activism had become “practically a form of suicide” in the Northern Caucuses, and called on the Kremlin to act.

The Kremlin installed Yevkurov as president of Ingushetia after removing grossly unpopular Murat Zyazikov a year ago this week. Zyazikov and his family face personal and financial ruin if the Prosecutor General decides to bring criminal charges of embezzlement.

Aushev’s murder marks at least the fifth activist killing in the Northern Caucuses this year alone, in a region plagued by government corruption and violence. Security forces in charge of controlling the insurgent violence spilling over from neighboring Chechnya are widely accused of abductions and extrajudicial killings that remain largely uninvestigated. As of July of this year, 170 persons have been kidnapped in Ingushetia, and while abductions have recently lessened, murders have increased. Magomed Yevloyev, former head of Ingushetia.ru (since changed to Ingushetia.org) and close ally of Aushev, was shot and killed by security forces while detained on August 31, 2008.

Maksharip Aushev’s car was shot with approximately sixty bullets as he and cousin Tauzela Dzeitova drove through the Kabardino-Balkaria territory in the Northern Caucasus on October 25. He died in his car of bullet wounds, while Dzeitova was hospitalized and has undergone several operations. He had been the victim of a failed kidnapping attempt on September 15 shortly after leaving a meeting with government authorities.

Aushev was a prominent businessman in the Russian republic of Ingushetia who turned to activism after his son and nephew were abducted in 2007, which he blames on the republic’s security forces. He had been determined to form an opposition that would use all lawful methods to stop bloodshed in the troubled North Caucus region. More than two thousand people attended his funeral on October 26.

Magomed Yevloyev, a fierce critic of Ingush President Murat Zyazikov, was detained Sunday as he landed in Nazran, Ingushetia’s main city. Police claimed that he tried to resist arrest, and was shot in the ensuing scuffle. Yevloyev’s attorney, meanwhile, said his client went peacefully into custody, and that he was shot while driving with police, and thrown from the car near a hospital. The opposition figure died while receiving care.

Yevloyev was the owner of an online news portal, Ingushetiya.ru, which was known for independent news and reporting from the republic. The website aired many views critical of the current Ingush administration, and reported on government corruption. Authorities had repeatedly targeted the site, which was branded “extremist” and ordered shut by a City Court in June. Its editor-in-chief, Roza Malsagova, fled Russia to seek political asylum in France after a number of politically-motivated criminal cases were launched against her. Malsagova said she had received threats from officials.

Ingushetia, which has a predominantly Muslim population, has experienced rising levels of violent crime, with frequent attacks on militsiya and security officials. Zyazikov’s administration has responded with a heavy hand, and has been accused of using excessive force against civilians and opposition activists.

A number of rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, the Moscow Helsinki Group and Memorial, have called for a full investigation of Yevloyev’s death.

Local activists, meanwhile, said that Zyazikov may be directly involved. Yevloyev’s relatives have apparently called for a blood feud against Zyazikov and Ingush Interior Minister Musa Medov, vowing to avenge Yevloyev’s death.

Ingushetiya.ru continues to publish material, and has relocated its servers to the United States.

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Further reading:

Ingushetiya.ru editor-in-chief Roza Malsagova accuses Murat Zyazikov of direct involvement in Magomed Yevloyev’s death in an open letter, published on the website.

An Open Letter to Murat Zyazikov, President of Ingushetia

Appealing to a murderer, whether an Ingush or the president of the republic, who shoots his own citizens in broad daylight, is immoral. There is no doubt that it was precisely you who gave the order for yet another extrajudicial execution. Doing this, you wanted to silence us, if you could, as during the times of the inquisition, you would have poured molten tin in our throats. I, the “commissar in a leather jacket,” as you deemed to call me, am telling you that God’s court will surely judge you. For every drop of spilt blood in the republic, you will have to answer before the Almighty, but first – before the Ingush, and if there are still men on this earth, first you will stand before them. Unlike you, Yevloyev was never a coward, he didn’t hide, he didn’t run away through back-door pathways. When militsiya officers were being shot, he didn’t hole up in the “President-hotel,” tucking in his rat’s tail. Giving interviews left and right about the “land of inter-ethnic friendship” and the “investment potential,” you assert that you know nothing about contract killings in the republic. Name at least one solved murder during the years of your tyrannical rule. What, did they solve the murders of the six-year-old Rakhim Amriev, Apti Dolakov, Kalimatov, Yandiev, Chakhkiev?.. Hundred have been killed during the time of your “rule,” with no one found responsible, with no killers. Only “terrorists” and “members of armed gangs!” Yevloyev wasn’t yet 37, and he leaves three small children, two of them sons!

If you still had something human in you, you would have at least though of them, before orphaning young children. “I am not saying that a blood feud is good, but it is a deterrent. It’s simply that if a person goes for it, he knows very well what he’s doing. Of course, it’s difficult afterwards for people to let him alone without a reaction, but none the less, there is no accidental moment.” (“Conversation without rules” [a Russian television show], featuring Ingush President Murat Zyazikov.) I think that you realized what you were heading toward, when you made the order to execute Yevloyev!

The independent Ingushetiya.ru news portal will continue its work in its current state until Zyazikov shoots us all, or until he is removed. There is no alternative.

Magomed Yevloyev will be put into the ground on the first day of the holy month of Ramadan.

Roza Malsagova, editor-in-chief of the independent Ingushetiya.ru internet-portal.

translation by theotherrussia.org.

According to Khazbiev, Malsagova is currently in a European country outside of Russia with her three children. “I have not gotten in touch with her yet, which is why I don’t know where she is exactly,” he said.

Khazbiev went on to describe the criminal proceedings launched against Malsagova for her work on Ingushetiya.ru. One of her offenses was publishing an interview with Musa Keligov, a leader of the Ingush opposition. A court found the text, which criticized the current Ingush administration, to be extremist.

Keligov, a former deputy to the presidential envoy of the Southern federal district, and currently a vice-president of the LUKOIL-International oil company, first gave the interview to the Vremya Novostei daily newspaper. Ingushetiya.ru merely re-printed the text, which sharply denounced Ingush president Murat Zyazikov, accusing him of corruption and going as far as saying that Zyazikov had connections to local kidnappings.

For her part, Malsagova has maintained that the Ingush prosecutor’s office was afraid of going against a national publication like Vremya Novostei, and decided to take their anger out on Ingushetiya.ru instead.

Authorities have had a contentious relationship with Ingushetiya.ru for years. The site, which allows a forum for a wide range of opposition views, was even ordered shut by a Moscow court for hosting materials of an extremist nature earlier this year. The independent news portal now uses an internet-host located in the United States.