Paul
Goble
Staunton, August 11 – Hundreds of
residents of Talgi, a town near the Daghestani capital of Makhachkala, have
gone into the streets to protest the seizure by siloviki of two employees of a
local stone quarry and the use of torture to force them to testify against the
owner of the facility, Dzhabrail Ibnukhazhirov.
Relatives of the men said the two
had been seized on the road between Vladikavkaz and Makhachkala. The men said
the police had planted weapons in their car and then used beatings and
electroshocks in an effort to secure their testimony against Ibnukhazhirov (doshdu.com/v-dagestane-proshel-narodnyj-shod-protiv-silovikov-pohitivshih-dvuh-muzhchin/).
The siloviki had brought charges of
illegal ownership of guns against Ibnukhazhirov at the end of last year but prosecutors
have not yet brought him and his supposed confederates to trial. After the villagers
protested their arrest and torture of his two employees, the Daghestani
authorities released them.
Three things about this superficially
minor case are important. First, an entire village in Daghestan rose against
the siloviki, a move that put them at risk of a serious coercive response.
Clearly, they were outraged by the actions of the police and were prepared to
take this public action in response.
Second, after the villagers did so,
the siloviki felt compelled to back down, releasing the men promptly rather
than “disappearing” them as has happened so often in the past. This suggests
that the powers that be in Daghestan are worried that a more repressive
approach might have led residents of other population points to join the people
of Talgi.
And third, the two men who were
victims of what has all the earmarks of an illegal arrest felt quite free to charge
the siloviki with engaging in electroshocks and beatings and their charges are
circulating far beyond the original scene of the crime, something that will
only deepen the divide between rulers and ruled in that part of the North
Caucasus.
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