Yevloyev's Shooting Deemed an Accident

By Natalya Krainova

Staff Writer

Published: October 28, 2008 (Issue # 1420)

MOSCOW — A police officer has been charged with accidentally shooting Magomed Yevloyev, owner of the embattled opposition web site Ingushetiya.ru, the Investigative Committee said Friday.

Ibragim Yevloyev, a criminal police officer with Ingushetia’s Interior Ministry who is not related to the slain journalist, faces charges of manslaughter when the case goes to court, the Investigative Committee said in a statement.

Magomed Yevloyev, a staunch critic of Ingush President Murat Zyazikov, was killed on Aug. 31 after being detained by police in Ingushetia’s main city, Nazran, as he stepped off a plane from Moscow.

The Ingush opposition has accused Zyazikov, the Ingush Interior Minister Musa Medov and the Kremlin of ordering Yevloyev’s killing. On Friday, it dismissed the investigators’ finding that the killing was accidental.

“The case is political. Yevloyev’s killing was premeditated,” Yevloyev family lawyer Musa Pliyev said.

The lawyer accused the investigators of being biased and said he would boycott the trial, which he called a “disgraceful performance.”

Pliyev said the investigators had refused to consider evidence from Yevloyev’s widow about the possible organizer of his death. They also disregarded an expert evaluation that Yevloyev was killed by a point-blank shot, which ruled out manslaughter, he said.

An Ingush opposition leader, Magomed Khazbiyev, said he also believed that the investigation’s findings had been fabricated.

A spokesman for the Investigative Committee declined to comment on Pliyev’s and Khazbiyev’s accusations.

Pliyev said he did not believe that the death would be properly investigated in Russia and promised to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France.