A suicide bomber who killed one person and injured 23 others in Nazran last week was the brother-in-law of slain opposition and human rights activist Maksharip Aushev, Ingushetia’s top prosecutor said.
Prosecutor Yury Turygin identified Thursday’s suicide bomber as Batyr Dzhaniyev, 23, Aushev’s brother-in-law and a relative of Ingush rebel leader Magomed Dobriyev, who was killed by law enforcement officers in September and was an associate of the late Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, Interfax reported.
Dzhaniyev might have been avenging the death of his mother, Leila Dzhaniyeva, who died Wednesday when a car that she was traveling in exploded after coming under police fire, a law enforcement source told RIA-Novosti.
Dzhaniyev’s car rammed into the closed gate of a Nazran police precinct at about 9 a.m. Thursday and exploded, injuring 24 people, one of whom later died in the hospital, the Investigative Committee said in a statement.
The blast partly ruined the police building and a nearby apartment building, the statement said.
In Wednesday’s violence, police have said they opened fire after the car carrying Dzhaniyeva approached a checkpoint, made a U-turn, and sped away. One of Dzhaniyeva’s sons also died in the incident, while two people were hospitalized with injuries, a second son and her daughter, Aushev’s widow.
The Ingush president’s office told The Moscow Times that the car exploded when police bullets hit the gas tank. But the Ingush branch of the Investigative Committee denied that police had opened fire and said a bomb in the car had accidentally detonated.
Aushev, 43, who campaigned against abductions by security forces in Ingushetia, died at the wheel of his car after unknown assailants peppered it with bullets Oct. 25 in Kabardino-Balkaria.
Sergei Markedonov, who studies interethnic issues at the Institute for Political and Military Analysis, said one of the important reasons for the escalation of violence in Ingushetia this year is “the not very qualified actions” of law enforcement officers.
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