A new Armenian initiative has the potential to exacerbate even further the already hostile relationship between Yerevan and the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, on the one hand, and Azerbaijan on the other.

Last month, an Armenian-sponsored radio station began broadcasting from Shusha (known as Shushi in Armenian), the second-largest town in the disputed enclave, to Azerbaijan’s Talysh minority. 

The radio station in question is named Tolyshistoni Sado (Voice of the Talysh) and broadcasts three hours daily in both Talysh (an Iranian language) and Azeri.

Fifty-percent of the broadcast content is Talysh popular music and the remainder devoted to Talysh culture, according to former Armenian diplomat Ara Papyan, who now heads the Modus Vivendi center, which co-initiated the project jointly with the Iranian Studies Faculty of Yerevan State University.

Papyan told the Caucasus Knot news agency that the broadcaster’s aims are entirely peaceful, devoid of any political content, and aimed at strengthening peace and stability in the region. But he also said one of the messages the station wants to convey to Talysh listeners is that the Karabakh conflict “is not their war, and that they are not obliged to support Azerbaijan.”

The Talysh are an Iranian people who live in the southeastern regions of Azerbaijan bordering on Iran.  The official results of the 2009 Azerbaijani national census give the number of Talysh as 112,000, or less than 1 percent of the country’s total population, compared with 76,800 in 1999.

Nonetheless, some Talysh claim the true figure is 500,000, and that a further  600,000 Talysh live in Iran. Papayan gave the total number of Talysh in Azerbajan alone as 2 million. Azerbaijan’s state-controlled media do not provide either TV or radio broadcasts in the Talysh language.

The Azerbaijani authorities reportedly initially assumed that the Iranian government was behind the new broadcaster; some Azerbaijani linguists quickly concluded that the station’s journalists were Iranian Talysh. But the Iranian Embassy in Baku issued a statement on March 27, one week after the broadcasts began, denying any connection with the initiative and affirming support for the territorial integrity of the Azerbaijan Republic.

Azerbaijani officials have not commented publicly on the new radio station, but Bayram Safarov, a leading member of the former Azerbaijani community of Nagorno-Karabakh, denounced it as a "provocation" instigated by "Armenian separatists" and called for international condemnation.

The Russian Congress of Peoples of the Caucasus (RKNK) appealed last week to Aleksandr Bastrykin, chairman of the Prosecutor-General's Office's Investigative Committee, to take control of the investigation into anesthesiologist Marat Gunashev's suspected links with the North Caucasus insurgency.

Gunashev has been held in detention for the past four months after being apprehended on November 28 in the operating theater of the Makhachkala hospital where he worked. His brother-in-law Shamil Gasanov, 35, a surgeon at the same hospital, was killed the same day. Police say they were constrained to shoot after Gasanov tried to open fire on security personnel during a search of his apartment. But when Gasanov's headless body was handed over to his family for burial, it showed signs of torture.

The two men are suspected of having facilitated the murder in February 2010 of Makhachkala police chief Akhmed Magomedov. In the case of Gunashev, that involvement allegedly took the form of performing a surgical procedure at the home of an unidentified acquaintance on a suspected insurgent. Both Gunashev and Gasanov had cast-iron alibis for the day of Magomedov's killing.

ALSO READ: Jailed Daghestani Doctor's Wife Appeals To Putin, Denounces 'Meat Grinder'

According to Gunashev's lawyer Zaur Magomedov (no relation to the murdered police chief), the case against Gunashev and Gasanov was based exclusively on the testimony of an unnamed woman who had been Gasanov's paramour for several years. After he left her to marry Gunashev's sister, the spurned mistress bombarded the two men with threats to disclose their purported crime to the police.

Public Chamber member Aslanbek Paskachev, to whom Gunashev's family has appealed for help, said that on the basis of his inquiries he gained an impression of Gunashev as a highly qualified and respected specialist who had never belonged to any group of public organization and had no criminal ties. Paskachev said the charge of attempted murder of a police officer raises "serious doubts."

Gunashev's father Kamil, a medical professor, categorically denies that he sympathized with the Islamic insurgency.

Colleagues at the hospital where Gunashev and Gasanov worked similarly described them as "secular to the marrow of their bones."

According to Gunashev's lawyer, even though not a shred of evidence exists to substantiate the charges against his client, Gunashev nonetheless agreed under physical and psychological pressure within days of his arrest to admit to Article 316 of the Russian Federation Criminal Code -- concealing a crime. But the indictment against him listed Article 317 (attempted murder of a member of the law-enforcement organs).

Since then, Gunashev has been transported from investigation facilities in Makhachkala to Vladikavkaz, and the case has been transferred from one investigator to another.

The RKNK appeal was not the first on Gunashev's behalf. A total of 2,223 Daghestani doctors have signed an open letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin protesting his arrest and continued detention. Whether Daghestan's new health minister, Tanka Ibragimov, described by acting Republic of Daghestan President Ramazan Abdulatipov as a respected physician capable of restoring popular trust in a health service riddled by corruption, is among them is unclear.

Abdulatipov was named republic head in late January, two months after Gunashev's arrest. He has publicly deplored arbitrary detentions and killings by the police and security forces. But unless and until he moves to bring clarity to what has become known as the "Gunashev-gate" scandal, his commitment to putting an end to such abuses will be open to question.

Chechen Republic head Ramzan Kadyrov proposed in an article in "Izvestia" earlier this week that foreign travel by senior Russian officials with access to state secrets should be restricted, if not banned.

Kadyrov linked that proposal to the recent death in England in circumstances that remain unclear of former Russian Security Council Deputy Secretary Boris Berezovsky. Kadyrov said he is concerned that Berezovksy might have still had in his possession documents containing state secrets. He suggested such a travel ban could be extended to former defense ministers; former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev; and to former senior Russian government officials Mikhail Kasyanov, Boris Nemtsov, and Aleksei Kudrin, all now in opposition to the current Russian leadership.

The argument Kadyrov adduced in support of his proposal is that Russia’s security is the highest national priority. But cynics might argue that it would equally serve as a face-saving response to the restrictions envisaged by the U.S. Magnitsky law intended to deny entry to the United States by Russian officials suspected of involvement in human rights abuses.

Kadyrov, who has been accused of personally torturing his opponents, is the only Russian official identified by name in the Magnitsky law in connection with "wrongdoing."

Mikhail Starshinov, who heads the Russian State Duma’s interfractional group for cooperation between civil society and the police and security services, questioned the need for such a travel ban. He said foreign travel by officials with access to state secrets is already regulated by existing legislation.

Two State Duma deputies from Chechnya, Adam Delimkhanov and Magomed Selimkhanov, have issued separate statements supporting Kadyrov’s proposal. Selimkhanov predicted that it would yield "palpable results" for Russia’s information security.

Delimkhanov, who is Kadyrov’s cousin, for his part described the proposed restrictions as essential for the preservation of Russia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, political, economic and social stability, and law and order.

Despite his parliamentary immunity from prosecution, Interpol issued a warrant for Delimkhanov’s arrest four years ago at the request of police in Dubai who suspected him of masterminding the murder there of Sulim Yamadayev. A former close associate of Kadyrov’s father Akhmed-hadji and commander of the infamous Vostok (East) battalion, Yamadayev fled Russia in late 2008 after falling out with Ramzan Kadyrov. The warrant for Delimkhanov was lifted last year.

The six-week standoff between Armenian President-elect Serzh Sarkisian and his closest challenger, Raffi Hovannisian, may have run its course -- or simply entered a new phase.

On March 31, Easter Sunday according to the Armenian Apostolic Church, Hovannisian ended the hunger strike he embarked on three weeks earlier to demand that the authorities recognize him as the legitimate winner of the February 18 ballot in which according to official returns he polled 37 percent compared with 58 percent for incumbent Sarkisian.

A leading member of Sarkisian’s Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) hailed Hovannisian’s decision as “prudent” and indicated that it could pave the way for talks between the two men.

Having vowed that Sarkisian’s inauguration on April 9 would take place over his dead body, and after rejecting on March 26 an appeal by Sarkisian to end his hunger strike, Hovannisian told supporters during a rally on Yerevan’s Liberty Square on March 29 that he had decided “to go on living for the sake of the future of my Motherland.” 

Hovannisian also said on March 29 that he plans to continue his campaign of protest. The following day, he set out on a tour of the provinces (where his support based is greater than in the capital) prior to convening a further rally in Yerevan on April, at which he will unveil his future plans.

Yet for all Hovannisian’s efforts to put a brave face on his decision not to put his life at risk, it is Sarkisian who has emerged the stronger from the protracted stand-off -- at least in the short term.

Reason And Restraint

First, he has reacted consistently, with reason and restraint, and without recourse to violence, to Hovannisian’s shifting and sometimes populist demands, offering counterproposals that would have guaranteed Hovannisian’s Zharangutiun (Heritage) party greater input into shaping the political agenda, and possibly also a handful of portfolios in the new government.

Sarkisian rejected the initial demands put forward by Hovannisian just days after the election, including holding a pre-term parliamentary ballot in which all 131 seats would be allocated under the party-list system.

The following week, parliament speaker Hovik Abrahamian (who had managed Sarkisian’s election campaign) invited Hovannisian to present “prudent proposals on behalf of voters and call for serious reforms and changes in staffing policies.” 

“I think that’s the way to go, if we care about our country’s progress,” Abrahamian added.

Abrahamian further implied that the government could offer ministerial posts to Hovannisian or other Zharangutiun members. “I am convinced that Serzh Sarkisian would be ready to discuss such issues with Mr. Hovannisian,” Abrahamian said. “I would consider that a reasonable proposal.” 

Some Yerevan papers subsequently reported that Sarkisian was prepared to offer Zharangutiun ministerial posts in sports, culture, youth affairs, and social welfare in the new government.

Hovannisian rejected Abrahamian’s overture, however. Then, on March 13, he retracted his post-election proposals, only to present one week later what he termed a “final offer” in the form of five conditions that Sarkisian should meet if he wanted “to carry on as de facto president after the stolen, rigged, and unconstitutional election, without a popular mandate."

Basis For Dialogue

Those conditions included Hovannisian’s postelection demand for a pre-term parliamentary election by the end of 2013, plus amendments to the election law to preclude falsification and the right to nominate the justice and foreign ministers, the head of the tax service and the National Security Service, and the prosecutor-general.

Sarkisian responded in a letter to Hovannisian saying that while some of those demands were unconstitutional, they could nonetheless serve as the basis for dialogue, provided that Hovannisian ended his hunger strike.

“I am sure that if we start working purposefully, relying on our shared ideas, then we will certainly be able to achieve the result,” the presidential press service quoted Sarkisian as saying.

Hovannisian, for his part, implicitly rejected that offer of dialogue by refusing to end his hunger strike and insisting -- in defiance of official protocol -- that he would talk to the president-elect only if the latter came to the square in central Yerevan where Hovannisian was based during his protest.

Hovannisian’s tactic of formulating his successive proposals and challenges to Sarkisian in terms, and with pre-conditions, that virtually guarantee their rejection has increasingly led pundits to question precisely what he hoped to achieve.

For example, Nor Zhamanakner (New Times) party chairman Aram Karapetian argued that Hovanisian’s actions are “devoid of all logic. If he was certain he won the ballot, he should have acted more decisively, and if he wasn’t, he should have tried from the very start to reach an agreement with the president."

Second, Sarkisian managed to expose, if not to exploit, differences in opinion and tactics between Hovannisian and other senior Zharangutiun members.

On February 28, the latter entered into talks with the HHK, which has a 70-seat majority in the 131-member parliament, and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation -- Dashnaktsutiun (HHD), which did not field a presidential candidate.

Those three parties tried but failed to reach consensus on convening an emergency parliament session to discuss ways to resolve the post-presidential standoff, including holding parliamentary elections within the next 12 months; and appointing Hovannisian to chair a multiparty commission, which would draft constitutional reforms over the next two years that would, among other things, curtail the president’s powers.

Hovannisian distanced himself from those talks even before they collapsed due to the HHK’s rejection of the other two parties’ proposals.

Yerevan Municipal Elections

Sarkisian has not commented publicly on Hovannisian’s decision to end his hunger strike. But senior HHK member Hovhannes Sahakian has hailed it as “a prudent step” and predicted it will open the door to a face-to-face meeting between the two men.

Meanwhile, with just one week to go before Sarkisian’s inauguration, the political focus is already shifting to the May 5 elections for the Yerevan municipal council.

Former Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian recently underscored the political significance of that ballot, given that between one third and one half of Armenia’s population lives in the capital.

Oskanian reasoned that, insofar as Yerevan constitutes “a state within a state,” its mayoral and municipal council elections can be regarded as national, rather than local in scale.

Oskanian, who was elected to parliament in May 2012 on the ticket of the Bargavach Hayastan (Prosperous Armenia) Party (BHK), will head the BHK’s list of candidates for the Yerevan ballot. He had expressed support last month for Hovannisian’s hunger strike, telling RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that what the opposition leader was doing  “is totally justified and legitimate."

Nonetheless, according to HHD member Armen Rustamian, that party’s proposal that either Hovannisian or Oskanian head a broad-based opposition bloc to contest the Yerevan ballot proved a nonstarter because the two men could not reach agreement on which of them should head the joint list of candidates.

Zharangutiun will participate in the Yerevan election in a bloc named Barev (Hello) Yerevan with five smaller parties, two of which were previously aligned in former President Levon Ter-Petrossian's Armenian National Congress. The bloc's list of candidates is headed by senior Zharangutiun member Armen Martirosian.

Russian TV’s First Channel broadcast on the evening of March 31 an interview with a young Ingush man identified as a former militant, who alleged that Republic of Ingushetian Prime Minister Musa Chiliyev pays $1 million every month to the insurgency not to kill him. 

Whether or not that allegation is true, it is likely to expedite the demise of embattled Republic of Ingushetia head Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, whose term expires this fall.

The Ingush militant in question was identified as Ibragim Torshkhoyev, who abandoned his studies in Moscow in the fall of 2010 to join the insurgency.

Torshkhoyev said he was quartered at the same mountain base in Ingushetia as Yevloyev, the young Ingush man who blew himself up at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport in January 2011, killing 36 people and injuring a further 130.

But Torshkhoyev claims that Yevloyev was trained for that suicide attack by self-styled North Caucasus Emirate head Doku Umarov. He does not mention Aslan Byutukayev (aka Amir Khamzat), who was identified in video footage with Umarov and Yevloyev as having prepared him psychologically for the terrorist attack.

That video footage also calls into question two other aspects of Torshkhoyev’s story: first, that he, Yevloyev, and Umarov were quartered at the same mountain base in Ingushetia, and second, that “by chance” he overheard Umarov order his long-time lieutenant, Supyan Abdullayev, “not to touch Chiliyev” because the latter paid $1 million in protection money every month.

In the video, Umarov says he made “a long journey” to the base of the Riyadus Salikhiin suicide squad headed by Byutukayev, where Yevloyev would have been trained. But Torshkhoyev cannot simultaneously have been with Umarov elsewhere and at the Riyadus Saliikhin base with Torshkhoyev.

As for Abdullayev, there are grounds for arguing that he spent the winter of 2010-2011 at the base at Verkhny Alkun on the border between Chechnya and Ingushetia where he was killed by aerial bombardment in April 2011, and not at the same base as Umarov.

Yevkurov’s official website has not yet commented on the allegations against Chiliyev, whom Yevkurov named as prime minister in March 2011.

Over the past 15 months, Ingushetia’s opposition Mekhk Kkhel has addressed repeated open letters and appeals to the Russian leadership implicating both Yevkurov and Chiliyev in corruption and the embezzlement of budget funds and demanding their replacement.

While the Kremlin has proven impervious to such appeals, Yevkurov has himself jeopardized his chances of a second term as republic head by openly opposing the proposed amendment to the federal law on direct elections of federation subject heads.

Yevkurov argued publicly that at this stage in Russia’s development, all republic heads should be appointed by the Russian president rather than directly elected.

The Mekhk Kkhel clearly does not have the clout to orchestrate the screening of an interview that is likely to end the political careers of both Chiliyev and Yevkurov. But Chechen Republic head Ramzan Kadyrov may have it in his power to do so.

Kadyrov and Yevkurov have been engaged in an acrimonious feud since August 2012 that escalated into a dispute about jurisdiction over territory which both republics lay claim to.

Chiliyev heads the Ingushetian government commission tasked with negotiating with the Chechen side a mutually acceptable solution to that dispute.

Hilal Mamedov, who is currently on trial in Baku on charges of spying for Iran, fuelling inter-ethnic hatred, and illegal possession of drugs, has been awarded the Azerbaijan Institute of Peace and Democracy’s Isakhan Ashurov Prize in recognition of his human rights engagement. Meanwhile, the court proceedings were adjourned last week after the prosecution’s key witness failed to appear to face questions from Mamedov’s lawyers. 

Mamedov, 53, is a member of Azerbaijan’s Talysh minority and editor in chief of a weekly newspaper in the Talysh language named “Tolyshi sado” (Talysh World). He was arrested in Baku last June, shortly after a video clip was posted on YouTube of him singing in Russian, to a traditional Talysh melody, the refrain “Who the hell are you? Why don’t you get lost?” The clip went viral across Russia. 

A subsequent search of Mamedov’s apartment yielded a small quantity of heroin which his family and the Baku human rights community are convinced was planted by police.

According to Rafiq Jalilov, co-chair of a committee formed last summer to defend Mamedov’s rights, the espionage charge against him is based exclusively on testimony by Elman Quliyev. Quliyev had been arrested in 2007 together with Mamedov’s predecessor as editor of “Tolyshi sado,” the literary scholar Novruzali Mamedov (the two Mamedovs are not related). Quliyev and Novruzali Mamedov were sentenced in 2008, Quliyev for six years on treason charges and Mamedov for 10 years on charges of espionage for Iran. Mamedov died in jail the following year.  

Testifying on March 6 at Hilal Mamedov’s trial, Quliyev said he had a five-hour conversation with Mamedov in a Baku tea-house in 2006 during which Mamedov said in the presence of two other men that he had contacts in Iran with whose help he was working to undermine Azerbaijan’s state sovereignty. (The Talysh are an Iranian ethnic group living on both sides of Azerbaijan’s southern border with Iran.)

But the two purported witnesses to that conversation, both now living abroad, have provided written depositions denying having been present, according to Halil Bagirov, one of Mamedov’s lawyers. Bagirov also points out that during his trial in 2008, Quliyev said he did not know Hilal Mamedov.

Quliyev was in jail at the time of Hilal Mamedov’s arrest in late June but has since been released prior to completion of his sentence. His current whereabouts, and why he failed to show up in court on March 27, are not known.

Speaking last week at the formal presentation of the Isakhan Ashurov prize to another of Mamedov’s lawyers, Leyla Yunus, who heads the Institute of Peace and Democracy, explained that Mamedov was selected as the first recipient because of all Azerbaijan’s human rights campaigners, journalists, and lawyers, he is currently in the most difficult situation. She characterized Mamedov as a man who always sought to defend human rights despite the pressure and threats to which he was subjected.

The Isakhan Ashurov prize is named after a former Interior Ministry investigator who fell foul of the Azerbaijani authorities in 1994 and was jailed on grounds of “exceeding his authority.” On his release two years later, Ashurov began representing political prisoners and prisoners of conscience. He died last year after a long illness. 

Also last week, the Talysh Cultural Center decided to resume publication of “Tolyshi sado” in both Talysh and Azeri. According to Jalilov, publication was suspended in June 2011 when Hilal Mamedov was first subjected to “pressure” from persons he (Mamedov) declined to name.

Over the past week, Chechen Republic head Ramzan Kadyrov’s understanding of Islam has been publicly questioned by two men on the opposite side of the North Caucasus barricades. They are Abu Mukhammad, the Daghestani religious scholar who is the qadi (senior Muslim authority) of the Caucasus Emirate proclaimed by Doku Umarov seven years ago, and Damir Mukhetdinov, a young Tatar who is first deputy chairman of the Union of Muslims of Russia.

The blog comments on Abu Mukhammad’s address are overwhelmingly positive. By contrast, Mukhetdinov’s more circumspect criticism triggered outraged statements in Kadyrov’s defense from several senior Muslim clerics, impelling Mukhetdinov to claim he was misquoted.

Abu Mukhammad’s 24-minute address was posted late on March 22 on the insurgency websites KavkazCenter, Hunafa, vdagestan.com, Kavkazjihad.com, Islamdin, and Djamaattakbir. As in virtually all his previous video addresses, Abu Mukhammad is shown alone, seated in front of a laptop, against the backdrop of the black jihadi banner.

Speaking in fluent, lucid, but heavily accented Russian, Abu Mukhammad appeals to Chechen police and security personnel and their superior officers in light of their efforts to justify their reprisals against Muslims in religious terms: that they are defending their religion and fatherland and preserving law and order.

Abu Mukhammad challenges the police to specify in whose name and for what purpose they, as nominal Muslims, are fighting the insurgency: “If you have the courage, then say that you are not fighting for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and that you spit on him.” He explains that “those who believe in Allah fight on the path of Allah.  This is why we consider you infidels.” He calls on the rank and file to break with their commanders who say they “will comply with Putin’s orders even if that means destroying the entire population,” and urges them to join the insurgency to prevent the ongoing “genocide of Muslims” in the North Caucasus, rather than “wait until all Muslims have been wiped out.”

Abu Mukhammad also takes issue with Chechen Republic head Kadyrov’s repeated characterization of the North Caucasus insurgents as “shaitans,” or devils, challenging Kadyrov to cite from the Koran to substantiate those accusations. He advises Kadyrov to “summon all your tame so-called scholars and get them to prove that you are not the servant of the devil. Why? Because at every opportunity, seeking to ingratiate yourself with your master, you publicly affirm that we are shaitans. Who after that is the real shaitan? Either you believe that Putin is a Muslim who lives by Shari'a law, or you have no reason to be angry with us for simply quoting Allah’s word.”

In this context, it is worth noting that Kadyrov has never publicly quoted a single passage from the Koran to substantiate either his denigration of the insurgency on any other argument related to Islam. The sole authorities he quotes are his late father, Akhmad-hadji Kadyrov, and Putin.

Abu Mukhammad muses at some length on the theological implications of Kadyrov’s professed love for Putin: Given that Muslims are resurrected in the next life along with those they love most dearly, it follows that Kadyrov will be with Putin -- the unspoken corollary being “may they both burn in hell for all eternity.”

Abu Mukhammad’s next challenge to the North Caucasus leadership is, “If you consider yourselves Muslims, then impose Shari'a law, and we shall stop waging war against you.” If you were indeed Muslims, he adds, you would fight against Putin and his team until he paid tribute to you as Allah demands.

Mukhetdinov’s criticism of Kadyrov was expressed during an interview he gave on March 19 to Radio Rossii. Speaking of the ongoing Islamic revival in Russia, he notes that “the majority of our Muslims...are still far from religion,” citing Kadyrov as an example. Mukhetdinov notes that Kadyrov complies with the requirements of his faith by building mosques and organizing mawlids (to mark the anniversary of the birth of the Prophet), but at the same time he consorts with pop divas; he interprets that contradictory behavior as evidence of “a split personality.”

Senior clerics were swift to exonerate Kadyrov and excoriate Mukhetdinov. Ismail Berdiyev, who heads the Coordinating Center of Muslims of the North Caucasus, defended Kadyrov as “a true Muslim in his deeds and in his heart” and someone “who has always tried successfully to revive traditional Islam in the North Caucasus.”

Chechen mufti Sultan-hadji Mirzayev, who schemed unsuccessfully last year to replace Berdiyev, argued that it is Mukhetdinov, not Kadyrov, who does not understand how a Muslim should behave.

Mukhetdinov’s immediate superior, Council of Muslims of Russia chairman Sheikh Ravil Gainutdin, stressed that Russia’s muftis do not share Mukhetdinov’s view. Gainutdin characterized Kadyrov as “a genuine leader” who sets an example to the heads of other republics with a predominantly Muslim population.

In the face of that barrage of criticism, Mukhetdinov claimed he was misquoted. He characterized Kadyrov as “a politician who embodies the Muslim elite of our country, and one of the few heads of Muslim republics who is not a nominal but a practicing Muslim.”

Further evidence of Kadyrov’s status as a candidate member of what pundits refer to as the Politburo 2.0 is the fact that a far more influential agency than the Council of Muftis of Russia has similarly leaped to the defense of Kadyrov’s reputation. A spokesman for the Investigative Committee of the Russian Prosecutor General’s office denied on March 25 as untrue an article in “Novaya gazeta” claiming that Federal Security Service (FSB) officers tasked with investigating the case of members of Kadyrov’s bodyguard arrested in Moscow in the summer of 2011 for kidnapping, torture, and extortion went on strike after the men in question were released from pre-trial custody.

Kadyrov’s spokesman Alvi Karimov for his part denied that Kadyrov has any bodyguards. He added that “no member of Kadyrov’s entourage has ever tortured or kidnapped anyone or engaged in any similar crime.”

It is not clear whether the purpose of a search of the Moscow office of the human rights watchdog Memorial on March 27 was to confiscate extensive documentary evidence of the involvement of the “kadyrovtsy” in precisely such crimes.