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| Caucasus |
| Head of pro-Kremlin party in Chechen capital killed |
| 2002-12-26 |
| Unidentified gunmen shot and killed the head of a pro-Kremlin party in the Chechen capital Grozny, and two Russian occupation policemen died in a clash with rebels in a nearby village. Sayed-Amin Adizov, a construction company chief who also headed the Grozny chapter of the United Russia party, was killed as he rode in his truck on Tuesday night, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Adizov's father, who headed the Chechen council of elders under the region's first separatist leader, Dzhokhar Dudayev, was gunned down in 1995, the Interfax news agency reported. Keep in mind that Maskhadov's thugs are "freedom fighters," not "terrorists" and "assassins." A pro-Kremlin party leader in Moscow, Vyacheslav Volodin, said the killing was an attempt to derail efforts at "normalization" in Chechnya. By this point, senseless Islamic violence has become the norm... Four Russian occcupation servicemen were killed and 12 were wounded in rebel attacks over the past 24 hours, the official said. Two policemen were killed and two were wounded in the skirmish in Ilinsykoye, a village near Grozny. Federal forces, meanwhile, detained nearly 200 people in sweeps for rebels and their accomplices in four regions in addition to the Grozny area, the official said. Human rights organisations have criticised the much-feared mass sweeps against Chechen males as a pretext for summary executions, torture and detention. Pro-independence Chechen politicians have called it a slow genocide. Wonder if they got that term from Chomsky? |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |