Attackers on tourists in Kabardino-Balkaria looked for militiamen, inspectors assert

The unidentified persons, who attacked tourists in Kabardino-Balkaria on August 9 and 19, were looking for militiamen, said an informed source from local investigatory bodies and added that both crimes had been committed by one and the same grouping.

On August 9, five strangers in camouflage and masks, armed with submachine guns, appeared in the high-mountainous tourist camp "Dzhily Su", which is highly popular because of its curative mineral sources. They presented themselves as special troop fighters and demanded to give out the rifle, which one of the tourists had on him.

Imin Ibragimov, deputy inspection head of the Headquarters of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) of the Republic of Dagestan, who spent his vacations in the camp, told them that he was a law enforcer and asked to present documents. The armed persons beat the militia colonel with butts and then shot him dead. Then they executed Iosif Nersesyan, a resident of the city of Shakhty, Rostov Region, father of four children, who was in the "Dzhily Su" on treatment.

At night on August 19, in Tyzyl Gorge, two kilometres off Kendelen village, a group of people was cooking shashliks and drinking alcohol. Six strangers in masks and camouflage approached them and asked whether militiamen were among the group.

Mukhtar Baichekuev, a Kendelen resident and an employee of the patrol-sentry service of the Elborus District, said that he was a militiaman. He was shot dead from a submachine gun. The attackers also killed a certain Victor Veremeyev, about whom nothing is reported besides that he was a vagrant.

In the opinion of investigatory bodies, both crimes were committed by the same group of unknown persons.

According to power agents, the attackers presented themselves as law enforcers; while the website, representing the Kabardino-Balkarian sector of "Imarat Kavkaz", placed a message in the morning on August 19 running that the murders in Kendelen were committed by a group of "mujahads" (the way "Imarat" militants call themselves, - comment of the "Caucasian Knot"), who found a group of tourists drinking alcohol, decided to check the IDs of these "unrighteous" and, having revealed a militiaman among them (Baichekuev), shot him dead together with Veremeyev. The latter was named to be an "accomplice" of the executed militiaman in the message.