This week’s attack on the president of Ingushetia may have been an attempt to keep the leader of the southern Russian republic from cracking down on corruption, reports the BBC.
A suicide car bomber rammed President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov’s motorcade Monday morning, killing one bodyguard and wounding Yevkurov and several other bodyguards. Russian officials and correspondents initially blamed Islamic militants in the province. But that might not be the case, according to the BBC.
…it is clear the person who carried out this attack had detailed information about where and when the president's motorcade would be on the move. That makes some analysts wary of assuming that Islamic militants, fighting for independence from
"A number of high-profile officials in the region were unhappy with Yevkurov's policies," says Grigory Shvedov, a leading regional expert. "Impending dismissals in the government were probably the reason for this attempted assassination.
"Yevkurov was planning to introduce order, to fight corruption and to sack politicians suspected of graft."
As I mentioned last week, Ingushetia has been the scene of several high-profile murders recently, including the recent shootings of a Supreme Court judge and a former deputy prime minister. In the wake of the attack on
Sochi itself is hardly the safest place in the region, with a series of bombings last year that left five people dead and wounded 19 – bombings that some observers have chalked up to criminal groups warring for territory. Last month, however, a Sochi police officer and a local cameraman admitted to carrying out the bombings. (The linked article is subscription-based, and the international media have not been covering the story, and there’s no word on what their motives are alleged to have been. The only recent story I could find was this, on the construction woes surrounding the future Olympic site.)
At any rate, if major publications including Time magazine are to be believed, the system that
Press speculates on motives for attack on Ingush president
Published: 23 June 2009
By Beth
"The Kremlin is absolutely powerless," says Alexei Malashenko, a scholar-in-residence at Moscow's Carnegie Institute. "They brought this situation on themselves by letting the local élite rule." After the fall of communism, Moscow, knowing that a secular or Orthodox Christian government would have little influence over the region's Muslim population, struck an informal deal with the republics: Moscow would appoint a governor who would be loyal to the Kremlin and, in return, that governor would remain in power provided no large-scale conflicts erupted.
But it's clear that system is breaking down and now leaders in
Other Russian-related News
A Russian gang in
The victim was warned that he would first feel feverish, then sweaty and dizzy, then he would vomit and die from a lethal virus, unless he paid €12,000 (£10,160) as his own ransom.
The Russian kidnappers who seized one of their compatriots on the
He was then freed, with the Russians expecting him to come rushing back, cash in hand. But, suspecting he was being taken for a ride, the terrified victim, who had been abducted in the popular Spanish coastal resort of Estepona, took a chance and sought refuge in the town's police station.
Estepona police had recently formed a special unit to deal with Russian organized crime; the unit quickly moved to arrest the kidnappers at the rendezvous point.
Serbian police are looking into the assets of alleged cigarette smuggling king Stanko Subotic, writes Transitions Online in an analysis of
For more on Subotic’s role in the Balkan cigarette trade, click here.
Blast Kills
Police are blaming organized crime for planting the explosive device that killed a conservative Albanian politician last week as he was driving through northern
Christian Democratic Party leader Nard Ndoka called Keka's death an act of terrorism and said he had been waiting to meet the regional leader in Shkodra when the explosion occurred.
"It was a clear political attack, a terrorist act," Ndoka said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. He said he believed the bomb had been detonated by remote control, based on accounts given by local residents near the scene of the blast.
Police alleged in a statement that Keka had ties with organized crime groups who may have been responsible for the explosion that killed him, but Ndoka angrily rejected that possibility.
"That is a dirty slander ... Clearly, this act was politically inspired," he said.
Italian police last week arrested 13 people in western Sicily on suspicion of aiding a man police called “the last of the great fugitives.” Police say that Matteo Messina Denaro is among the handful of mobsters vying for control of the Sicilian Mafia, and that the arrests mean they are one step closer to catching him. Also last week, authorities in Venezuela arrested a top Italian drug-trafficking middleman as he left his apartment in
It’s perhaps all this good news that has prompted several US states to send their cops to Italy for trainings and seminars, based on the idea that Italian experience with the mob can help US police with fighting Mexican drug cartels. Or it could be a great excuse for a pasta-and-wine junket.