Ingush Seven Case Costs Second FSB Overseer in Moscow His Job

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 9 – Mikhail Belousov, an FSB lieutenant general who has been overseeing nationality issues in the North Caucasus for the Presidential Administration, has been fired, apparently because his bosses feel he has failed to contain the impact of the Ingushetia protests and the now long-running Ingush Seven trial.

            This is the second senior Moscow official with responsibility for overseeing Ingushetia to lose his job this year. In May, FSB Col. Gen. Dmitry Trofimov, deputy head of the Administration for the Defense of the Constitutional Order, was removed as well (capost.media/news/politika/v-kremle-smenili-kuratora-ingushetii-/ and fortanga.org/2021/09/uvolen-vysokopostavlennyj-sotrudnik-fsb-rossii-kurirovavshij-ingushetiyu/).

            These two dismissals of high-level officials in Moscow show just how much Ingush events continue to echo in the Kremlin and also and perhaps even more importantly how closely Moscow via the security services is supervising what is happening in that North Caucasus republic and likely others as well.

            Meanwhile, at the Ingush Seven trial, the court turned down almost all defense appeals that various officials be called to testify but did agree to summon the former head of the Ingushetia interior ministry to give evidence on the March 2019 protest which is at the center of the case (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/367897/).

            Meanwhile, Kavkaz-Uzel reports, two of the defendants, Akhmed Barakhoyev and Malsag Uzhakhov, are suffering from problems with their hearing and Zarifa Sautiyeva, the only woman among the seven, facing medical problems because her jailors are unwilling to give her the medical assistance she needs.

            In another development in Ingushetia, Murad Daskiyev, the head of the Union of Teips of Ingushetia, issued a video appeal to the citizens of the republic to take part in the upcoming elections as part of their efforts to seek changes within the legal system (fortanga.org/2021/09/sovet-tejpov-ingushetii-obratilsya-k-zhitelyam-v-preddverii-vyborov/).