New Details on Nalgiyev Case Raise Specter Yevkurov Planned Mass Ingush Arrests Far in Advance

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 14 – Lawyers for Ingush activist Ismail Nalgiyev, who was arrested in the Minsk airport and forcibly extradited to Russia, say that a court in Russia has prepared the orders for his arrest in his absence two months earlier, something that raises the possibility that Yunus-Bel Yevkurov planned for mass arrests well in advance (zamanho.com/?p=7704).

            If that is the case, then it is entirely possible that others, not yet detained, are on that list and that arrests will continue. Even the possibility that that might be the case will have the effect of boosting the political temperature in Ingushetia.  And it certainly means that there was such an order well before Nalgiyev sought to fly to Prague via the Belarusian capital.

            As the Zamanho portal puts it, “the unprecedented arrests of leaders and activists of the public movement are viewed by the population as a form of struggle by the regime against the entire people. Each arrest is considered by the majority of the population as a crime, an arbitrary act by the authorities, intended to suppress and frighten all Ingush.”

            That the dragnet may have been planned in advance only makes such feelings more widely and intensely shared. But even as this report surfaced, the Ingush authorities arrested additional people (zamanho.com/?p=7719).

            Meanwhile, in a development that may be related to the Yevkurov regime’s strategy of coping with the protests,  officials announced that they were launching a new religious radio station (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/335423/). It could be that Magas hopes that promoting religion will undermine the teips, most of which oppose Yevkurov, by promoting a Muslim identity.