If they don't blow it up, they'll fire them

Policemen answer for rampant terrorism in Dagestan

The head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Dagestan, Adilgerey Magomedtagirov, yesterday fired almost the entire leadership of the Makhachkala police. It paid for the fact that, according to the minister, it “could not give an adequate response” to the terrorists who have been continuously attacking local authorities for the last six months. Explosions of patrol cars, oil and gas pipelines, and trains have long become commonplace in the republic.

The patience of the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Dagestan finally ran out after the last and largest terrorist attack - the explosion in the center of Makhachkala on July 2 in broad daylight of a truck with special forces soldiers of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. As a result, ten people were killed and almost 30 were injured. True, why it was the Makhachkala police, whose employees, in fact, are most often undermined by terrorists, who were punished for their poor fight against terrorism, remains a mystery. For some reason, the anger of Mr. Magomedtagirov bypassed the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the republic itself. Even those representatives of the Dagestan police who are involved in the fight against terrorism - the heads of the departments for combating organized crime, extremism and criminal terrorism - got off with only a warning about incomplete official compliance.

As the minister noted, since the beginning of 2005 alone, 58 terrorist attacks have been committed in the republic, 40 of them in Makhachkala. “Both the chief of the Internal Affairs Directorate and the chiefs of police have enough excuses. And enough promises,” said Mr. Magomedtagirov, immediately announcing the dismissal of the head of the Makhachkala Internal Affairs Directorate Yusup Abdulaev and the heads of the Sovetsky, Leninsky and Kirovsky District Departments of Internal Affairs. After this, the head of the criminal investigation department of the republic, Rashid Isaev, also announced his desire to leave his position.

Yesterday, all the special services of Dagestan did not hide in private conversations that the “defeat” of the Makhachkala police was clearly an indicative and political step. And, of course, it won’t help the search for saboteurs.

Yesterday, by the way, this was confirmed by new data from the prosecutor’s office. She received the results of a genetic examination to identify one of the most dangerous and elusive criminals of the republic, Rasul Makasharipov, nicknamed Muslim. It was the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the republic, by the way, that publicly “buried” him in January of this year, when the house where the militants had settled was literally razed to the ground by a tank. The Ministry of Internal Affairs claimed that it was Muslim who died there, leading a gang that shot about 30 employees of local special services. Now it turned out that it was not Muslim who died in that house, but his cousin. The gang leader himself is alive. And most likely it is he who continues his sabotage war.

Tatiana GRITSENKO