Date

31/08/2008  

First

Magomed  

Surname

YEVLOYEV  

Sex/Age

M  

Incident

homicide  

Motive

J  

Place

car  

Job

chief editor  

Medium

internet  

Federal District Plus

North Caucasus  

Street, Town, Region

Nazran, Ingushetia  

Freelance

yes  

Local/National

local, Ingushetia.ru  

Other Ties

opposition  

Cause of Death

murder, shot  

Legal Qualification

109 (negligent homicide)  

Impunity

trial, conviction, 11 December 2009  

[Updated 16 October 2010]

The Investigative Committee, which now answers directly to the President (until recently it answered to the Prosecutor General), has given assurances to a visiting delegation from the CPJ that it will give serious consideration to 19 deaths that the CPJ believes to have been murders linked to the professional activities of the deceased journalist. One name on this list is that of Magomed Yevloyev.

(See agency and Russian media reports on CPJ press conference)



MAIN ENTRY

On 31 August 2008 the chief editor of the opposition website Ingushetia.ru, Magomed Yevloyev, was shot dead while being driven in custody from the airport at Magas. Yevloyev was arrested by local police as he came off an airplane and was later brought to hospital with bullet wounds to the head from which he died.

He was arrested, said the Ingushetia ministry of internal affairs, as part of the criminal case against those who had planted explosives in the office of an aide to the president of Ingushetia. During the journey into Nazran Yevloyev attempted to seize the weapon of one of the officers, it was said, and the latter accidentally fired at him. A criminal case was soon instigated under Article 109, “Accidental infliction of death” but relatives and numerous acquaintances of Yevloyev did not accept this account of his death and said his killing was a deliberate act of intimidation directed against the opposition and human rights movement in the North Caucasian republic.

The first preliminary hearing was held on 10 December 2008.

Protests came from international and Russian media monitors. In October 2008 Russian President Dmitry Medvedev removed President Zyazikov of Ingushetia from power and replaced him with Yunus-bek Yevkurov.

Ingushetia.ru was a major opposition force in the small republic. In one noteworthy action it encouraged citizens to help expose the falsification of the presidential vote in the territory by signing an online petition that, contrary to the claimed mass turnout, they had not taken part in the elections.


YEVLOYEV FAMILY BEGIN APPEAL TO STRASBOURG, 13 July 2009

Yevloyev's family say they have lodged an appeal with the European Court of Human Rights after previous cases collapsed. They have also appealed to Russia's president to intervene in the case.

The death of Yevloyev in August 2008 sparked massive protests against the local authorities. "We have appealed to the European Court because nothing will ever be decided in Ingushetia," said his father Yakhya Yevloyev. "And there is still another hope. We wrote to President Dmitry Medvedev and we await his answer," he told Reuters.

A spokeswoman for the European Court of Human Rights, based in Strasbourg, confirmed the Yevloyevs' application has been lodged but said the court has yet to decided if it will accept the case.

Conviction came at the Karabulak district court in Ingushetia, under Article 109, in December 2009.

Reuters


LIGHT SENTENCE FURTHER MITIGATED, March 2010

On 2 March 2010 the Supreme Court of Ingushetia softened the sentence on the policeman convicted last December of killing Magomed Yevloyev, owner of the opposition site Ingushetia.ru. Ibragim Yevloyev (no relation), was then given two years in a penal colony. Now he is only subjected to restrictions on his movements and the two year ban on working in law enforcement has been lifted.

Magomed Yevloyev’s relatives categorically disagree with the Court’s decision and plan to seek its reversal, reports the Vremya Novostei daily.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has also expressed outrage about the decision to soften Ibragim Yevloyev’s sentence. “It is outrageous that Magomed Yevloyev’s assassin has been released form prison,” Nina Ognianova, European and Central Asian programs coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists, said. “The Supreme Court of Ingushetia is encouraging impunity among journalists’ assassins. We are calling on the Supreme Court to reverse this dangerous ruling,” she said.

CJES bulletin, March 2010

http://www.cjes.ru/bulletins/?bid=3751&country=Russia&lang=eng


“THE SITUATION IN INGUSHETIA”

by Magomed Yevloyev

(Originally published on Ingushetia.ru, date unknown. Republished on Ingushetia.org website, 25 February 2009; translated for CPJ by Ekaterina Lysova)

The situation in the Republic of Ingushetia has been deteriorating and might lead to social turmoil with serious negative political and economic consequences.

Below, I have briefly laid out the salient points, characterizing the current state of affairs in the republic. Because of the blundering policies of Ingushetia’s administration; its insufficient attention to the problems of unemployment, the poor standard of living, and other issues the effect of which has been compounded by pervasive corruption among state officials; and because of the detachment of authorities from the needs of their constituents— the credibility of the local and federal government has dropped to its lowest. Wahhabism—the radical movement in Islam— has gained popularity among young people, particularly those living in rural areas.

A lot of youths have been joining Wahhabi groups while the regional government passively stands by, doing nothing to prevent the trend. In fact, Wahhabi clubs have been freely and publicly propagating their theories—which are foreign to traditional Islam—in various parts of Ingushetia. As a result, it has become possible for Chechen rebels to establish military bases and tent camps in the forests of Ingushetia, and be actively joined by Ingushetians who are attracted to the ideas of Wahhabism. Those were the groups responsible for the attack on power structures and peaceful citizens on the night of June 22, 2004.

Ingushetia’s president, Murat Zyazikov, has no authority among the population. The last traces of it— which had only lingered on due to President Vladimir Putin’s support for him, a fact Zyazikov has missed no opportunity to point out—vanished following the June 22, 2004, events in Ingushetia, and the terrorist act committed on September 1 in Beslan.

During the armed attack of the rebels on the night of June 21-22, Murat Zyazikov, as the commander- in-chief of the republic, not only did not lead the actions of resisting the rebels, but disappeared somewhere. Most residents of Ingushetia are convinced that he was hiding in the basement of one of his relatives. The population’s discontent peaked with regards to Zyazikov’s behavior during the terrorist act in Beslan. The elders heading Ingushetia’s main clans—who wanted to go to Beslan—were looking for the president for three days and could not find him; he only reappeared after the school hostage crisis was over.

During his short tenure as president, Murat Zyazikov has alienated almost all federal officials: the head of the Supreme Court, the interior minister, the prosecutor of the republic, the head of the security service, and representatives of the Southern Federal District. Zyazikov wants to replace all of them with people loyal to him. He has partly succeeded in this—those and other government posts are openly auctioned off in the republic. […]

From THE ANATOMY OF INJUSTICE. UNSOLVED KILLINGS OF JOURNALISTS IN RUSSIA (CPJ, New York, September 2009): Appendix 1 – Excerpts from the work of journalists slain in Russia since 2000 http://cpj.org/reports/CPJ.Anatomy%20of%20Injustice.pdf