Despite Pressuring His Relatives, Ingush Police Still Can’t Find Pogorov

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 19 – The Ingush police, in yet another effort to find Akhmed Pogorov, the vice president of the World Congress of the Ingush People, whom they have been seeking to arrest for more than two months and who has continued to infuriate the authorities with his videos, raided the home of his relatives again (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/336824/).

            Pogorov’s ability to elude police, almost certainly the result of the support he has within the population, has made the Ingush interior ministry look incompetent. That ministry’s reputation will in no way be improved by the arrest of one policeman there for possessing a supply of illegal drugs (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/336833/).

            There is no indication the policeman as getting ready to plant them on anyone as police in Russia today are doing so often. Instead, they almost certainly were for personal use. But from the point of view of the authorities, that makes his action even more unacceptable.

            Meanwhile, the conflict over the disputed Chechen-Daghestani border continued to bubble on.  Chechen Parliamentary Speaker Magomed Daudoov denounced his Daghestani counterpart Khizri Shikhsaidov and the Daghestani police of causing the problem at the border near Kizlyar (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/336808/).

            In a related development, a source in the Chechen government confirmed earlier media reports that Grozny was prepared to transfer 74 hectares of disputed land to Daghestan near Kizlyar if Makhchkala was ready to hand over to Chechnya an equivalent amount of territory elsewhere. The source also confirmed that there are now eight sections of the border in dispute.