Translated material
Criminal drive
A criminal case has been initiated into the illegal detention of Magomed Evloev
The Directorate of the Investigative Committee for Ingushetia, as it became known yesterday, opened a criminal case for abuse of power against police officers who, on August 31, 2008, allegedly detained the famous Ingush oppositionist, owner of the Internet site “Ingushetia.ru” Magomed Evloev for interrogation. It was on the way to the investigator that same day that he was shot dead in a police car under mysterious circumstances.Initially, authorities put forward the theory that it was an accident. But Mr. Evloev’s associates openly called his murder a reprisal against an undesirable politician and persistently tried to refute the official version. First, they managed to win a number of courts to declare the very detention of Mr. Evloev illegal. Now the oppositionist's associates have succeeded in initiating a criminal case. If the “Evloev case” continues to develop in this way, it is possible that the representatives of the murdered politician will be able to achieve the main goal - reclassification of the criminal case based on the very fact of his death. And it is possible that Ibragim Evloev - the namesake of the deceased, the former head of the personal security of the ex-head of the republican Ministry of Internal Affairs Musa Medov, who, according to investigators, fired the fatal shot - will have to answer for premeditated murder, and not for “causing death through negligence."
Information about the initiation of a criminal case last Friday was reported yesterday by the former lawyer of the Evloev family, and now assistant to the President of Ingushetia, Musa Pliev. His words were confirmed by the famous Ingush human rights activist Magomed Khazbiev, as well as one of the lawyers of the Evloev family, Magomed Abubakarov. According to Mr. Abubakarov, he does not yet have the resolution itself, but, according to him, Art. 286-3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (exceeding official powers, resulting in grave consequences).
The reason for initiating a criminal case was the decision of the Supreme Court of Ingushetia on January 20 of this year that the very fact of Mr. Evloev’s detention was illegal. After this, lawyers for the family of the deceased received every reason to seek punishment for those who initiated the illegal resolution. According to Messrs. Abubakarov and Khazbiev, in addition to the investigator of the Nazran City Department of Internal Affairs Dzhambulat Shankhoev, who signed the same resolution, and the employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs who carried it out, as part of the new investigation, the head of the Nazran City Department of Internal Affairs Akhmed Kotiev, as well as, possibly, Mr. Medov himself, may also be brought to justice . The latter, by the way, after the resignation of the former head of the republic Murat Zyazikov, was transferred to Moscow to the central apparatus of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation to the position of chief inspector.
36-year-old Magomed Evloev was detained on August 31 at Magas airport right next to the plane on which he flew from Moscow. According to the oppositionist’s associates, President Zyazikov, whose resignation Mr. Yevloev was seeking, was also on the same flight, and allegedly there was an altercation between them in the cabin. Mr. Zyazikov himself denied this. One way or another, the personal security of Mr. Medov, who met the head of the republic at the airport, took an active part in detaining the oppositionist.
Later, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ingushetia reported that Mr. Evloev was detained allegedly for the purpose of being brought in - forced delivery for interrogation in a criminal case in which he was a witness. The detainee was pushed into the car, and the motorcade moved towards Nazran. Friends and relatives of the oppositionist, who met him at the airport, gave chase, but were able to stop only one vehicle in the motorcade, in which Mr. Evloev was not in it. Then the republican hospital reported that he had been admitted to them with a fatal through and through bullet wound to the head. The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ingushetia stated that it was an accident - allegedly Mr. Evloev in the car tried to take away a machine gun from one of the policemen, and in the scuffle, Ibragim Evloev, who was sitting next to him, accidentally fired from his Stechkin pistol, and the bullet hit Magomed Evloev right in the temple.
The comrades and relatives of the deceased immediately declared that this was an open reprisal against a politician disliked by the leadership of the republic; in addition, they declared blood feud both against the president of the republic and the minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, as well as against the direct perpetrators of the alleged murder. They immediately declared that the detention of the oppositionist itself was illegal. According to the law, forced delivery of a witness for questioning is applied only if the witness repeatedly and without good reason ignores the investigator’s subpoenas. Magomed Evloev, as it turned out, was called to the investigator only once, and he warned in advance about his absence for a good reason.
Not long ago, investigator Shankhoyev publicly admitted that he signed the order to bring Mr. Evloev after his death. In February, he spoke about this in an open address to the new president of the republic, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, and the prosecutor of Ingushetia, Yuri Turygin. The investigator reported that on August 31 (it was Sunday), officers from the Nazran City Department of Internal Affairs arrived at his home at approximately 1:30 p.m. and reported that Akhmed Kotiev was calling him urgently. “I went with them to the department and went to see the boss. He said that we urgently need to draw up a document to bring the witness Evloev,” said Mr. Shankhoev. He said that when he went to Kotiev, he had a ready-made decree on the arrest of Magomed Evloev with someone else’s signature on his table. “I asked who wrote it, but received no answer. Then I took that resolution, tore it to shreds and explained that resolutions are not written that way,” stated the investigator. According to him, then he went to his office and prepared a new resolution, already in compliance with the norms, to bring Magomed Yevloev for questioning. According to the investigator, at approximately two o'clock in the afternoon he was already returning home and noticed that a lot of police and ordinary people had gathered in the hospital courtyard. A couple of hours later he was called back to work, where his colleagues reported that at that time the already dead Magomed Evloev was brought to the hospital. “After all this, I realized that I had been framed, and demanded that the decree on Yevloev’s arrest be returned,” he claimed. According to the investigator, he demanded an explanation from his superiors on what basis the minister’s guards took part in the detention of Magomed Evloev, but he was “ordered to remain silent.” As a result, Dzhambulat Shankhoev concluded that the decree he signed “could not be executed, since at the time of production of this document, as it turned out, witness Evloev was already dead.”
The mysterious and scandalous death of the owner of the then opposition website “Ingushetia.ru” (the site has moved, and now this domain belongs to the official resource of the Republic of Ingushetia), according to many, last fall became a catalyst for a change of power in the republic. At the end of October, after numerous scandals, the loudest of which was the death of Magomed Evloev, former President Murat Zyazikov was forced to resign.
Preliminary hearings in the case of Ibragim Yevloev, who is still accused of “causing death by negligence,” began in December, but due to the defendant’s failure to appear, they never got off the ground. As Mr. Khazbiev said, the accused, who was under recognizance not to leave the place, presented a forged certificate stating that he was allegedly in the hospital from mid-December to mid-January. However, at the trial it was established that this was not the case. In addition, according to Mr. Khazbiev, Ibragim Evloev, despite this subscription, often leaves the territory of Ingushetia on his own business. Now the preliminary hearings will have to be held again, and the first hearing is scheduled in the Nazran court on March 19.