Leading member of Moscow’s Muslim community killed
Moscow (AsiaNews) - A leading exponent of the Russian Muslim community was
stabbed and killed in Moscow near the Belorusskaja station. Many
suspect that the crime was perpetrated by militant right-wing ultranationalists.
Metin
Mekhtiev (pictured) was a native of Azerbaijan. According
to preliminary reports, on the night between 10 and 11 April, he was waiting
for the arrival of his wife and son of two months at the station. Ria
Novosti agency police sources report that his body bore several stab wounds on the
neck and face.
Mekhtiev
was head of international department of the Islamic Cultural Centre of Russia,
an organization founded in the Federation in 1991 with support from the Saudi
embassy and banned by the Russian Supreme Court last year. According
to the group, the judges' initiative was instigated by the Russian secret
services. According
to website Aze.az, Mekhtiev worked with all major Muslim organizations in the
country and was very active in working with students and young people from the
Caucasus. "It
is a brutal, barbaric and medieval murder," reported the head of the
Islamic Cultural Centre in Moscow, Abdul-Wahid Niyazov, according to whom the
man was attacked by a gang of five persons, one of which was a young woman.
For
now, the police have released no details on the possible motive for the
killing, but among the Russian bloggers many support the hypothesis that crime
is linked to the ultra-nationalists.
After
the collapse of the USSR, Russia experienced a sharp rise in nationalist
sentiment. Racially motivated violence killed 21 "non-Slavic-looking"
people in 2011 alone, a figure down from 42 similar murders recorded in 2010,
according to data organization Sova.
05/06/2019 12:45
29/05/2019 09:30