In Dagestan, police fail to register "honour killings", local experts assert

In Dagestan, "honour killings" (and investigators also classified the murder of Maryam Magomedova, a resident of the village of Nechaevka, as an "honour killing") are committed not often; however, "honour killings" are not uncommon, local lawyers and experts emphasize.

Let us remind you that on July 23, the Supreme Court of Dagestan returned for retrial the case on the murder of Maryam Magomedova, a 22-year resident of the village of Nechaevka of the Kizilyurt District. According to the prosecutors' version, in August 2010, she was killed by her uncle, who found her behaviour reprehensible.

According to the report of Sapiyat Magomedova, a Dagestani lawyer, in recent five years, only in the village of Nechaevka, several "honour killings" had been committed; however, relatives of killed young women do not file complaints to the police. Meanwhile, according to the advocate's story, killings are often caused by rumours and suspicions rather than by real actions of victims.

"I am the first persons who stated that openly. Others persons did not file any complaints to the police, the young women just disappeared, and everything was over. Their mothers do not even know where they were buried."

Officials from the press service of the Dagestani Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) have told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent that the Dagestani MIA has no statistical records of "honour killings".

"In case when relatives of a disappeared person did not file a complaint to the law enforcement bodies or we did not become aware of the crime in some other way, then, naturally, we cannot start search of a disappeared person or initiate a criminal investigation," Fatina Ubaidatova, the head of the MIA's press service, has explained.