VLADIKAVKAZ, December 27 (Itar-Tass) — North Ossetia is investigating the murder of the republic’s deputy mufti, Ibragim Dudarov.
A criminal case was instituted on charges of murder and arms trafficking, a spokesman for the regional investigative department, Eduard Gusov, told Itar-Tass.
Ibragim Dudarov was killed on Wednesday night, when he was driving home to the village of Chmi.
“Probably, he stopped his car for his killers,” North Ossetia’s mufti Khadzhimurat Gatsalov said. “The car with the dead man kept up standing for hours until passersby saw it.”
Ibragim Dudarov, 34, was the only person from North Ossetia’s Spiritual Board of Muslims, who graduated from the university receiving religious education.
“Ibragim was a conflictless person, he was especially chosen to be killed for his religion,” Gatsalov said.
From the beginning of the year this has been the seventh assassination attempt on Islamic religious leaders. Five murders were committed in Dagestan.
On March 23 a home-made explosive device went off in the centre of Dagestan’s town of Buinaksk, killing the imam of the city’s mosque, Gitinomagomed Abdulgapurov, and his police guard.
On June 28 unidentified criminals in masks stormed into a mosque in the village of Karamakhi, Dagestan’s Buinaksk district, shooting imam Magomedkamil Gamzatov and one parishioner.
On July 19 a car with Tatarstan’s mufti Ildus Faizov, who headed the republic’s Spiritual Board of Muslims, was exploded in Kazan. He was hospitalized. On the same day in a different part of the city criminals shot dead the head of the education department of Tatarstan’s Spiritual Board of Muslims, former deputy mufti Valiull Yakupov.
On August 28 a suicide bomber blew herself up in the house of top Muslim religious leader Said Afandi in Dagestan’s village of Chirkei, killing him and his six followers.
On November 11 unidentified criminals shot dead the imam of the mosque in the Dagestan’s village of Khadzhalmakhi, Gadzhi Aliyev, in the front yard of his home.