Window on Eurasia: Moscow Sets Up Special ‘Prison for Terrorists and Extremists’ near Krasnoyarsk

Paul Goble

            Staunton, January 30 – Given that Russian courts are convicting more people on terrorism and extremist charges and concerned that such people will recruit others to their way of thinking in the camps, Moscow is setting up a special “prison for terrorists and extremists” in Yeniseisk in Krasnoyarsk Kray.

            Describing this project on Polit.ru today, Ilya Karpyuk notes that this special prison, which will open later this spring, is being developed at the site of a facility that had been housing those in that region being charged with a variety of crimes and being investigated by the authorities (polit.ru/article/2013/01/30/prison/).

                “For Russia,” Karpyuk points out, any “prison is a quite exotic form of punishment.” Instead, the majority of those convicted of crimes are held in one or four classes of camps, ranging from settlements where they are under supervision to strict regime facilities in which those confined are subject to much tighter control.

            Most Russian institutions of “a prison type,” he continues, are the investigation isolators or SIZOs. “People in them live not in barracks but in cells, and conditions are significantly worse than in ordinary camps and even more than in settlement colonies.” Indeed, rights activists say that time served in one of them is equal to 50 percent more than time served elsewhere.

            The SIZOs are “the only institutions of the Federal Penal Service which are situated in the center of major cities and thus are ‘windows’ into the Russian penitentiary system.” They are often housed in buildings constructed “in the 18^th, 19^th, and more rarely at the beginning of the 20^th century.”

           

            According to Karpyuk, “some of the prisons are so old that they are more suitable for a museum than for holding people.” That may include the special prison in Yeneseisk as well. It is t“younger than [Moscow’s] Butyrka, having been build in1863-1865” and not in the century before that.

                At present, there are only seven prisons in the usual sense in Russia. The Yeniseisk facility will be the eighth for the Russian Federation as a whole and the second for all of Siberia and the Far East.  Penal officials say they hope that isolating the most dangerous extremists and terrorists, they will limit their influence on other convicts.

             The existing prisons fall into two categories, the general and strict regime depending on how tightly controlled the inmates are.  The new prison will certainly be among the strict facilities, but it appears that it may have even more stringent controls than do other prisons in that class.

            Most people convicted of extremism or terrorism will never be confined in the Yeniseisk prison. Only those guilty of especially serious crimes meriting five years or more or recidivists are likely to be sent there.  But this out-of-the-way prison may very well be used for Chechen and Ingush inmates now serving time elsewhere.

            Many of them, other rights activists say, become even more embittered against Moscow as a result of their penal servitude and some of them do everything they can to work against the prison authoriteis, including recruiting others to their cause. Isolating such people could limit their ability to do so (www.bigcaucasus.com/events/actual/29-01-2013/82248-baybatyrov-0/).

Window on Eurasia: New Russian Orthodox Hierarchs More Likely to be from the Diocese They Now Head Than Were Their Predecessors

Paul Goble

            Staunton, January 30 – Over the last two years, Patriarch Kirill has enthroned 69 new bishops for the Russian Orthodox Church, a group quite different from its predecessors not only in terms of education – more have secular degrees – but also origins – most of them come from the dioceses they now head instead of being outsiders imposed from the center.

            Those changes and their age – most are in their 40s – mean that Kirill will be able to control the direction of the Russian church not only during his patriarchate but well beyond, according to a survey of their biographies by the Orthodox weekly, “Neskuchny sad” (www.nsad.ru/articles/novye-arhierei-zachem-episkopu-svetskoe-obrazovanie).

            Approximately a third of those taking part in the church council in Moscow will be doing so for the first time, the magazine says. At the last one, on February 4, 2011, 206 of the 221 hierarchs then serving did so. Since that time, Kirill has enthroned 69 bishops, most for bishoprics created since that time. (There were 35 new sees established in 2011 alone.)

            The average age of the new class of bishops is only 40. That means that most of them were born in the early and mid-1970s, finished their training during perestroika, and began serving as priests in the 1990s. Thirty-four of the 69 completed their theological training by correspondence, a remarkably high figure compared to the past.

            The magazine notes that “the majority of hierarchs, who were elevated in the 1960s and 1970s” -- that is, the class before this one -- “studied at the Leningrad Spiritual Academy,” where they were trained by Metropolitan Nikodim who trained Patriarch Kirill. But under the late Aleksii II, “practically all the hierarchs … were graduates of the Moscow” one and “began their monastic life in the Trinity-Sergeyev lavra.”

            But the background of the new class means that the Lavra group is being replaced by those from the regions. Yet another way the new class is different, “Neskuchny sad” points out,is that “the greater part” of the new hierarchs have secular university training as well as theological studies. “This picture is not typical for the Russian Church.”

            After finishing school, 35 of the 69 members of the new class studied in secular institutions and universities and received training in medicine, physics or “even music.” Two of the new bishops were even trained as “military specialists,” and some of them even received their candidate degrees.

            Twenty-two of the 69 served for a significant period of time as instructors at the spiritual seminaries or “worked as instructors at government faculties of theology.” But perhaps the most interesting thing that sets this group of bishops apart is the following: 34 of them come from the eparchates or regions where they will now be serving as bishops. In the past, that was a rarity.

Window on Eurasia: Concerns about Sochi Olympiad behind Kremlin’s Move in Daghestan

Paul Goble

            Staunton, January 29 –President Vladimir Putin named Ramazan Abdulatipov, head of Daghestan in place of Magomedsalam Magomedov who will now work on nationality issues in the Presidential Administration because the Kremlin is worried continuing instability there could threaten the Sochi Olympiad in 2014, according to commentators in the Russian Federation.

            Akhmed Yarlykhanov, a senior researcher at the Moscow Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, told the Caucasus Times that “the decision to change the leadership of Daghestan was dictated by the need to impose order in the republic as the Olympic Games in Sochi approach” (caucasustimes.com/article.asp?id=21097).   

            Daghestan in many respects is “the key republic in the North Caucasus,” the scholar said, and Moscow has now “appointed a man who is very much an outsider” on whom the center can rely “because he has not lived in Daghestan for more than 30 years and does not have clan or other ties in the republic.”

            Thus, far more than his predecessor who was very much enmeshed in such ties, Abdulatipov who has a reputation for flexibility and adaptability to changes in policy lines will be in a position to take the kind of actions that could pacify the population there and thus relieve the concerns of Moscow and foreigners about security in Sochi.

            And Biyakay Magomedov, the editor of the Daghestani weekly “Chernovik,” agreed. He told the “Kavkazskaya politika” portal yesterday that Abdulatipov was “a beautiful choice. He is a remarkable man, literate and educated and who is concerned about the republic in ways that earlier leaders have not been” (kavpolit.com/kreml-xochet-spokojstviya-do-olimpiady/).

            But Abdulatipov was chosen less for those qualities than because “the Kremlin wants to ensure peace and quiet in the region before the Olympics.  If the Duma does not adopt a law putting off elections of regional heads, then there will be voting in Daghestan in September.” The new man, unlike his predecessor, “would have every chance of winning.”

            But “if the selection of the head of the region remains with popular assemblies, Magomedov continued, “then Moscow will not be risking anything at all [by its choice of Abdulatipov]  because the deputies can be counted on to confirm any candidate proposed by the federal center.”

            According to Magomedov, the dismissal of Magomedsalam Magomedov had been expected for some time. There is “nothing super-natural” about the delay. It is probable that the Kremlin couldn’t process the papers in a timely fashion or was uncertain of what new position it would be offering the former Daghestani chief.

            Various Moscow commentators have offered “various versions for why Magomedalam was sent into [this honorary] retirement, but according to the “Chernovik” editor, the main reason is obvious: he had not fulfilled the obligations he had earlier taken upon himself and thus Daghestan remains extremely unsettled.

            The former Daghestani leader had not been able to improve the republic’s economy because he could not escape from the influence of three magnates there, despite the infusion of funds from the center, and had not been able to improve security, despite the introduction of additional Russian forces in recent months.

            According to the editor, one of the closest and most thoughtful observers of Daghestani developments, Abdulatipov’s “first-order task” will be to remove “all current ministers without exception” and to name new people from the outside.  “If Moscow gives Abdulatipov such authority, then he can really change something.” But that is an open question.

           

          And it is also an open question whether Abdulatipov or anyone in Makhachkala or Moscow can ensure that the North Caucasus will be sufficiently quiet ahead of the Sochi Olympics to eliminate concerns about security. Indeed, by making this issue so central, Putin is almost inviting the militants to do what they can to make sure that is not the case.

Window on Eurasia: Popular Arab Islamic Preacher Leaves Kazan after Spending 20

Paul Goble

            Staunton, January 29 – Kamal el-Zant, who came to Tatarstan in 1992 to study medicine and who remained as an oncologist and a popular, if supposedly “non-traditional” Islamic preacher, has left the Russian Federation together with his family, apparently out of fears that the authorities will link him to the attacks on the Tatarstan muftiate last July.

            Today, Kazan’s “Biznes-Online” portal describes him as having become “the informal leader of part of the Muslim youth of the Republic of Tatarstan” and recounts something about his activities there over the last two decades and the reactions of other Muslim leaders there to his departure (www.business-gazeta.ru/article/74043/).  

At the end of the 1990s and the early 2000s, the portal continues, Kamal el-Zant attracted many Tatar young people by his sermons, his books, DVDs, CDs, and via his website, www.kamlzan.ru/. Initially he read sermons at the city’s Burnay mosque and then moved to the Eniler mosque attached to the Russian Islamic University.  

From the latter he was removed in the case of a scandal involving the mosque’s imam, Shavkyat Abubekerov, but Kamal el-Zant sued in an unsuccessful effort to recover his position but with greater success in distancing himself from Abubekerov and the latter’s activities in that mosque.

            More controversy followed when his book, “Tell Me about the Faith,” which had been approved by the former Tatarstan Mufti Iskhakov, was put on a black list by Iskhakov’s successor and when the social center he moved to after leaving the Eniler mosque was ordered closed by the authorities after the attacks on the muftiate last July 19.

            Those close to Kamal el-Zant say that he has left Russia “forever,” but others note that he left before about a decade ago but then returned and speculate that he may do so again.  The latter suggest that he left because certain radicals were upset that he was not radical enough and officials in the government and MSD felt he was too radical and insubordinate and thus a threat.

            Rafik Mukhametshin, the rector of the Russian Islamic University, told the portal that people like Kamal al-Zant were absolutely necessary in the first years after the collapse of the communist system. He could give sermons in Russian, something absolutely necessary if young people who did not speak Tatar well were to be attracted to Islam.

            Now, times have changed, he said. There are “already local cadres prepared” to work in the same area he did. “Thus one can say that Kamal fulfilled his mission, and the results of this were varied and not only positive. “One could not call them classically hanafi” although that is how Kamal described them.  And the now-departed preacher had largely “ignored the many centuries of the traditions of the Tatar people and the theological inheritance of the Tatars.”

            Azat Akhunov, an instructor at the Institute of Oriental Studies and International Releations of the Kazan Federal University, provided another perspective.  He said that it was “difficult to believe” that Kamal had left Russia. He was a masterful preacher and won many people, especially the young, for Islam.

            It is true that many “accused him of extremism and Wahhabism,” especially after the change at the top of the Tatarstan MSD. But he was within the Hanafi rite by and large, although there may have been things that “do not correspond to ‘traditional’ Islam.” And it is certainly the case that after 20 years, he had mastered “the rules of the game” in Kazan.

            In comments reported by Russia’s Interfax news agency, Rais Suleymanov, the head of theVolga Center for Regional and Ethno-Religious Research, was more pointed in his criticism. He suggested that Kamal was a “missionary” for the Muslim Brotherhood and that he had left once he saw where things are now heading (www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=49811).

            “He conducted propaganda in Russia which found a response among the urban youth of Tatarstan who speak Tatar poorly,” a real advantage to hi because “the majority of Tatar imams use Tatar as the language of their sermons, Suleymanov said. But he lacked theological training, having obtained a degree in Lebanon only in 2008 and promoted “pan-Islamic unity.”

            And Suleymanov added with the clear implication that there were grounds for more general suspicions about the Lebanese preacher that “after the attack on the Islamic leaders of Tatarstan on July 19, 2012, in Kazan, al-Zant ‘went to ground’ and ceased to read sermons, having adopted a wait and see position.”