Under epidemic pretext, authorities limit scale of Anzorov's funeral

Some members of the Chinkhoi teip (family clan), to which Abdullakh Anzorov, who was shot by French police after killing the teacher Samuel Paty, belonged, were not allowed to his funeral in the village of Shalazhi. The authorities explained the closure of the village by the coronavirus pandemic.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on December 5, the body of Chechen native Abdulak (Abdullah) Anzorov, who beheaded teacher Samuel Paty in the suburbs of Paris and was shot dead by the police after the murder, was taken to Chechnya and buried in the village of Shalazhi in the Urus-Martan District.

Villagers knew that Anzorov's body was transported to Shalazhi to be buried into the family cemetery, a local resident Yakub told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent. "We thought he would be buried somewhere in Europe. In Chechnya, on Kadyrov's order, bodies of such guys are not given out to their relatives. We learned by chance that the body was being transported via Turkey for burial here," the man said.

According to Yakub, the gate of the household of one of Anzorov's close relatives was open for three days; people came to express their condolences. "Mainly local residents came to the tezet (commemoration), since the village was blocked, nobody was allowed in. There were many who wanted to express condolences, even people came from Ingushetia, but they were not let into the village," he said, adding that no one from the republic's leadership and clergymen was present at the funeral, as it was when Yusup Temirkhanov was buried.

Aza, an official of one of the Chechen state structures, explained to the "Caucasian Knot", that Shalazhi was closed due to the pandemic, and only local villagers can get there.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on December 10, 2020 at 02:30 am MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.