ANOTHER PUBLIC OFFICIAL GUNNED DOWN IN INGUSHETIYA

C O N F I D E N T I A L MOSCOW 001043 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/16/2018 TAGS: PGOV PINR KDEM KJUS ASEC RS SUBJECT: ANOTHER PUBLIC OFFICIAL GUNNED DOWN IN INGUSHETIYA Classified By: POLITICAL M/C Alice G. Wells for reason 1.4 (d). ¶1. (SBU) Summary: On April 13, Ingushetiya's deputy head of the Supreme Court Khasan Yandiyev was killed. While Ingushetiya government officials were quick to tie the shooting to Yandiyev's 2004 prosecution of Islamic terrorists, opponents attributed the murder to the local government's repressive policies. Yandiyev's death is the latest in a rising number of attacks on officials throughout the troubled North Caucasus region, which may increase pressure on Moscow to address the deteriorating situation in Ingushetiya and Dagestan. End Summary. ¶2. (SBU) According to a local Ministry of Internal Affairs spokesman, on April 13 unknown assailants shot dead Khasan Yandiyev, the deputy head of Ingushetiya's Supreme court, while he was stopped at a service station near the town of Karabulak to change a flat tire. The head prosecutor in Ingushetiya stated that Yandiyev's murder was undoubtedly related to his work, although reporters noted that he had never received any death threats and he had not been reassigned a bodyguard after returning to work from vacation. Yandiyev had convicted ten men for carrying out the June 2004 attack in Ingushetiya, in which 79 people died and an additional 105 were injured. ¶3. (SBU) Yandiyev's killing is the latest in a serious of shootings of government law enforcement representatives in Ingushetiya and has reportedly resulted in increased security for judges and around certain government buildings there. The day before Yandiyev was killed, a traffic policeman died when unknown persons fired upon his police car in the Sagopshi Malgobekskiy region. On April 2, assailants shot Mikhail Magera, the deputy head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs; on March 14, four policemen and six suspected militants died in a separate gun battles in Nazran and the village of Yekazhevo. In nearby Dagestan, the a head of Dagestan Radio and Television Gadzhi Abashilov was killed in a drive-by shooting in Makhachkala on March 21. Gunmen also shot and killed Mark Metsayev, the head of the Organized Crime Unit in North Ossetiya, on March 9. ¶4. (C) According to North Caucasus expert Gregoriy Shvedov, insurgent groups in the North Caucasus are increasingly turning to targeted killings of government officials and representatives of law enforcement; as a result, he argued, police are targeting suspected extremists for extrajudicial killing, only later calling them terrorists. Sergey Markedonov, head of the Inter-ethnic RELATIONS Department at the Moscow Institute of POLITICAL and Military Analysis, added that Yandiyev's murder is further proof of the need for the Kremlin to make a serious power transformation in Ingushetiya. Tanya Lokshina from the Moscow office of Human Rights Watch was less sanguine that this high-profile killing would result in the dismissal of Ingushetiya president Murat Zyazikov, but agreed that the continued attacks were an increasing embarrassment for the Kremlin. BURNS