|
Former Top Secessionist Chechen Assassinated
BAKU, May 24 (News Agencies) - A former top official in the secessionist government of Russia's Chechnya republic has been shot dead in the Azerbaijani capital Baku, officials said on Thursday.
Magomed Koriyev, previously head of the anti-organized crime unit of the Chechen interior ministry, was killed Tuesday evening, an Azeri police official, Yashar Aliyev, told AFP.
"He got eight bullets from a Makarov pistol. We do not have any information about the post he had in Chechnya. He was living in Baku as a refugee," the police spokesman said.
Some 7,000 Chechens have taken refuge in Baku.
A spokesman for Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov told AFP by telephone that another former Chechen official, deputy interior minister Movladi Raisov, had been found last week with his throat cut in Georgia close to the border with Chechnya.
Many pro-independence Chechen fighters have taken refuge in this area.
According to a Georgian expert on Chechen affairs, Mamuka Areshidze, the assassinations are the result of internal Chechen feuds.
But the rebel spokesman accused the Russians of being behind the slayings.
"These murders are all linked and the Russian special services are carrying them out. The two victims were not involved in the fighting but Moscow wants to wipe out Maskhadov officials who do not support federal forces," he said.
The Russian government no longer recognizes Maskhadov and his government since its troops entered the breakaway republic.
Seven separatist fighters and one civilian have been killed in Chechnya over the past 24 hours, while Russian troops successfully repelled a cross-border raid from the neighboring republic of Dagestan, the federal military said Thursday.
Five separatist fighters were killed in Zakan-Yurt, west of the Chechen capital Grozny, and two others died in clashes near the southeastern village of Tsa-Vedeno, according to the Russian general staff.
Meanwhile, the bullet-riddled body of a primary school teacher was found in a street in Grozny's Staraya Sunzha district, the general staff told Interfax.
Russian troops successfully prevented an incursion by a dozen Chechen separatists, who crossed the republic's southeastern border with neighboring Dagestan, ITAR-TASS quoted the federal army as saying.
Russia launched its "anti-terrorist" campaign against Islamic separatists in Chechnya on October 1, 1999, following an earlier rebel raid from Dagestan that was only put down after weeks of brutal conflict.
|
