Police in the Moscow region arrested two men suspected of trying to assassinate a former Chechen and Ingush official who has ties to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov’s late father.
Russian Interior Ministry spokeswoman Irina Volk said those arrested in the town of Odintsovo included an alleged hitman and the person who hired him. Volk shared a video of masked agents storming an apartment, making at least one arrest and interrogating a man.
The two men were taken in for questioning about the Oct. 10 shooting and hospitalization of Sherip Alikhadzhiyev in the village of Lapino. Alikhadzhiyev, an ethnic Chechen, held government posts in Russia’s North Caucasus republics of Chechnya and Ingushetia in the early 2000s.
Russian media described Alikhadzhiyev, 58, as a close ally of former Chechen leader Akhmat Kadyrov, who was assassinated in 2004 after he switched sides and became a pro-Russian politician.
In 2007, Kadyrov’s son and successor Ramzan Kadyrov accused Alikhadzhiyev of being suspected of an unspecified crime while serving in the Ingush administration.
Following his hospitalization earlier this month, some Russian news outlets reported that Alikhadzhiyev serves as an aide to State Duma lawmaker Vladimir Shamanov, who later seemed to deny the claims.
The state-run news agency TASS, citing anonymous law enforcement sources, claimed Alikhadzhiyev’s alleged shooter was a previously convicted Ukrainian citizen and identified the second suspect as Ingushetia native Bashir Omarkhodzhayev, who owns a recently registered construction business.
Alikhadzhiyev was shot on the same day as Kadyrov declared a “blood feud” against two State Duma lawmakers and one senator following a deadly shootout outside the Moscow headquarters of Russia’s largest online retailer Wildberries.
It was not immediately clear whether Alikhadzhiyev’s shooting and Kadyrov’s comments were connected.
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