The mayor of Makhachkala, Said Amirov, formally charged in the murder of a local investigator, was briefly hospitalized after he inflicted wounds on himself while in pre-trial custody.
“Now he is receiving treatment in hospital. Doctors say that his condition is satisfactory,” a Federal Penitentiary Service spokesperson told Interfax Friday.
An unnamed source in the prison service earlier told Izvestia that a prison guard discovered Said Amirov, who was "covered with blood," late on Tuesday 11 June.
"The detainee had quite deep cuts on his right arm, left wrist and both shins," Izvestia quoted the source as saying. "Doctors said that though the wounds were indeed life-threatening, it was hard to establish whether Amirov indeed planned to take his own life or did it in protest, as inmates sometimes do."
The man was taken to Moscow's Hospital No. 20, but was later transferred back to a pretrial detention facility, the source told Izvestia.
The investigation believes Said Amirov was the mastermind behind the December 2011 killing of investigator Arsen Gadzhibekov in the Dagestan city of Kaspiysk, the Investigative Committee. Amirov was detained on June 1 and taken to Moscow, where a judge ordered him placed into pre-trial custody for two months.
Material from The Moscow Times is included in this report.
