Power agents shot Uzhakhov dead without warning, eyewitnesses say

As reported by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ingushetia, on November 25 in Karabulak, two suspected militants were killed in a skirmish in their VAZ-2109 car. The casualties were Mustafa Tochiev and Khamzat Uzhakhov. Mustafa was in federal search. However, the eyewitnesses and Uzhakhov's relatives assert that Tochiev was just a passenger in Uzhakhov's taxi car.

"My brother was a taxi driver. Even at the moment of shelling his car had yellow squares - the sign of a taxi. How could he know that Tochiev was in search? In wasn't written on him. My brother had nothing to do with him - neither relative nor acquaintance; he just gave him a lift for money," Tagir Uzhakhov, Khamzat's brother, said to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

Tagir said that his brother's car was shelled without any warning. Then, according to eyewitnesses, when the car had been shelled, Khamzat Uzhakhov was finished by a control shot in his nape. Then, they planted firearms into Uzhakhov's car, as eyewitnesses assert.

According to the Investigatory Department (ID) for Ingushetia of the ICPO, the skirmish burst out at about 3::00 p.m. About an hour later, power agents searched Uzhakhov's house in Troitskaya village, Sunzha District, and plundered a lot of his property.

"About 30 agents from unknown power structures, in masks and camouflage, rushed into my brother's house without any explanations and any search warrant. They failed to present themselves, and didn't even tell the wife that my brother was killed. The agents abused my sister-in-law and her sister. They turned everything upside down, broke the windows and doors, and damaged everything they could. They took away and never returned all the domestic equipment, telephone, golden articles, money and everything valuable, even the Koran. They spent about an hour there," said Tagir.

"Only on the following day, we learnt that the brother was killed. He had never spent the night outside his home. We suspected that something was wrong, especially after the search. We started looking for him in the militia and morgues, and found him finally in one of them," said the brother.

According to the ICPO's ID for Ingushetia, Uzhakhov's car had no license plates. Tagir Uzhakhov asserts that they were taken away after the car was shelled.

The Uzhakhovs plan to address human rights organizations and law enforcement bodies and to meet President of Ingushetia Yunus-Bek Evkurov to appeal against the actions of power agents, who executed Uzhakhov, conducted a non-sanctioned search and plundered his property.