- Date
- 05/05/2010
- First
- Shamil
- Surname
- ALIYEV
- Sex/Age
- M
- Incident
- homicide
- Motive
- ?J
- Place
- road
- Job
- director
- Medium
- TV & radio
- Federal District Plus
- North Caucasus
- Street, Town, Region
- Makhachkala, Dagestan
- Freelance
- No
- Local/National
- local - Priboi & Vatan radio, TNT TV-Makhachkala
- Other Ties
- Cause of Death
- shot
- Legal Qualification
- Articles 105 ("Murder") and 222 ("Illegal possession of firearms") of the RF Criminal Code
- Impunity
- investigation
MURDER (May 2010)
Shamil Aliyev, the founder and chief manager of the Priboi and Vatan radio stations and director of the TNT-Makhachkala television network, has been shot and killed in broad daylight in Dagestan's capital Makhachkala.
His car came under submachine-gun fire by unidentified persons who quickly disappeared from the scene of the crime, leaving Aliyev and his bodyguard Saidmagomed Ubaidullayev dead and driver Ramazan Magomedov, wounded. An attempt to intercept the attackers yielded no results.
The police have instituted criminal proceedings under Article 105 ("Homicide involving the use of firearms") and Article 222 ("Unlawful possession and carrying of firearms") of the RF Criminal Code, reports the RIA-Dagestan news agency referring to the press service of the Investigative Committee (Dagestan prosecutor's office). So far, two interpretations have been advanced. Shamil Aliyev may have been killed in connection with his business activities, or as a staunch opponent of Wahhabism.
According to Kommersant Daily, Aliyev was a follower of "traditional" Islam and his radio and TV broadcasts were anti-Wahhabist in tone. Specifically, TNT showed a documentary, "Wahhabism Pure and Simple", one of whose authors, Abdullah (Telman) Alishayev, was also shot and killed in a Makhachkala suburb on 2 September 2008 (see entry for Alishayev in database). Alishayev's killers have never been brought to justice.
GDF digest, 477, 11 May 2010
DAGESTAN SHOWBUSINESS AMBUSHED
In its 6 May article Kommersant Daily developed an alternative interpretation, i.e. that Aliev's death was linked to his prominent role as a highly successful showbusiness impresario whose concerts were always sold out.
In a further comment, the daily remarked that the police in Dagestan were usually in too much of a hurry to blame such deaths on unlawful armed gangs (often claimed to be of Wahhabi tendency) because, apart from anything else, this raised their clear-up rate for murder.