Makhackala – Gazimagomed Magomedov, 36, a member of the Dagestan parliament, was shot dead on Monday night in the Gimri village of Untsukul, the Dagestan police said.
He was a target for speculations about his identity after he joined the Chechen war against Russia and had offbeat relations with both resisters and security forces.
He was shot four times, some sources say, or fourteen times, some other sources say, after he exited the house of his friend at midnight when he was called out to appear outside.
Dagestan’s Interior Ministry sources said that the assassination could be linked to Ibrahim Gacidadayev, leader of an armed gang that is especially active in the Gimri area.
A bag of two-kilogram TNT explosive was found in the village of Shamilkale on December 1, one day before the Duma elections, beneath the stairs of a five-storey building where Magomedov’s apartment is. It was considered to be an assassination attempt.
Gazimagomed is said to have been in the early 1990s a close friend of Bagautdin Magomedov, a founder of the Dagestan’s Islamic Community. According to the Russian intelligence reports, he was involved in an uprising against the federal forces in 1999 when a group of Chechens joined some Dagestan people and declared a state of government based on the sharia in two Dagestan villages. Russia used this incident as one of the reasons for waging its second war against Chechnya.
Magomedov’s supporters were charged with kidnapping of Aryan Erkel in Dagestan in 2002. Erkel was a Dutch representative of the Doctors Without Borders organization. He was later released in 2004 when €1mn was paid in ransom. (Agency Caucasus)
