Tuesday, October 15, 2019

Ingush Leader Pogorov Still at Large Despite Moscow Claims, Lawyer Says


Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 12 – Yesterday, Moscow’s Kommersant newspaper, picking up on various Telegram channels, reported that police in Ingushetia had arrested Akhmed Pogorov, the vice president of the World Congress of the Ingush People, who has been on wanted lists for more than five months (kommersant.ru/doc/4124603).

            But despite a massive raid on his residence, his lawyer Magomed Bekov says, they did not find or arrest him, perhaps dissuaded by a large crowd of friends and supporters who gathered around the house when the police arrived, apparently certain that this time they would seize Pogorov (kavkazr.com/a/30213131.html).

            According to Pogorov’s attorney, the police may have been trying to provoke the population into acting in ways that would have allowed the authorities to arrest more of them; but if so, that effort failed: the crowd behaved well and there was no basis for such actions, Bekov continues.

This is the latest case in which Moscow reports something about Ingushetia that turns out not to be true.

Meanwhile, the repressive actions of the authorities continue. In Nalchik, jailors again denied lawyer Fatima Urusova access to imprisoned Ingush activist Zarifa Sautiyeva (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/341137/ and zamanho.com/?p=13759), complicating preparations for future hearings.

And in the Sunzhe district, part of which was transferred to Chechnya as a result of the September 2018 deal between former Ingush head Yunus-Bek Yevkurov and Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov, several herdsman unsuccessfully tried to seize municipal land without permission, an indication of just how sensitive land issues are (sunja-ri.ru/index.php/3427-popytka-samozakhvata-zemel-presechena-v-selskom-poselenii-nesterovskoe).

No comments:

Post a Comment