Society
Death of a free spirit
Published 03 April 2008
Observations on Dagestan
Murder in Russia is a brutal, murky and ingrained part of life. Journalism in Russia has become an increasingly dangerous profession. The intertwining of these two worlds was solemnly illustrated on 21 March when two renowned journalists from the volatile northern Caucasus region of Dagestan were brutally murdered within hours of each other.
Gadzhi Abashilov, 58, chairman of the Dagestan State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, was killed in a hail of gunfire in a drive-by shooting in Dagestan's capital, Makhachkala. He was an outspoken critic of terrorism, and the motive for his murder is thought to be linked to his profession. Officials at the ministry of internal affairs placed responsibility at the door of anti-government "Wahhabist" extremists.
Earlier the same day, Ilyas Shurpayev, 32, a celebrated television news reporter with Channel One, was tortured and murdered in his flat in Moscow. He had been strangled with his own belt and repeatedly stabbed. His flat had then been set on fire in a crude attempt to destroy the crime scene.
The concierge of his apartment block revealed that Ilyas had called to ask that two men of Caucasian appearance be allowed to enter the building shortly before his body was discovered. It seems his killers were known to him.
Until three weeks before his death, Ilyas had been based in Dagestan, which is where I met him in January this year. We had dinner at a pizza restaurant in the capital's Reduktorni district. It was bitterly cold, -18°C. The unusually harsh winter had taken its toll on the restaurant's bathroom facilities and we washed our hands in the snow before sitting down to eat.
Ilyas had much he wanted to talk about. He told me of his recent visit to the UK, when he'd stayed in London and Bradford. He loved London and said he hoped to return again. As for Bradford, having lived there myself for six months while working on the Channel 4 Dispatches documentary Young, Angry and Muslim, I agreed with his view that it was a city of grand architecture but with a deep social malaise.
We discussed the parallels and differences between our lives and work. Ilyas covered the northern Caucasus, Iran and Azerbaijan and often worked amid conflict. He was not an investigative reporter, making his murder all the more inexplicable. His final report was on the restoration of a monastery in Abkhazia, a breakaway republic of Georgia.
Although he reported hard facts for state television, Ilyas had the curiosity and intelligent mind of any professional journalist. Just before he was killed we arranged to speak on the phone to discuss information he had about a horrific honour crime involving an influential and powerful political Dagestani family, as well as a story suggesting that terrorism within Dagestan was sponsored by the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, with the complicity of Dagestan's president, Mukhu Aliyev.
That telephone conversation never took place and the facts that remain are bewildering. The afternoon before he was killed, Ilyas wrote in his blog that he was amazed to discover he had been blacklisted by a popular Dagestani newspaper.
"Now I'm a dissident!" he wrote. "Don't know whether to laugh or cry . . . The founders produced a list of people who it's forbidden to publish in the paper . . . And there I am, right in the front row! At the top of the list! I have never taken part in the political life of the republic . . . because I'm lazy . . . Maybe I should do a 'suitcases, train-station, off-to-Israel' turn so as not to become a second Khodorkovsky!"
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists ranks Russia as the third most dangerous place for journalists to work and there is widespread concern at the perceived erosion of press freedom within Russia, particularly during Putin's regime.
Abashilov was on the same blacklist as Ilyas but police authorities have been quick to deny any connection between the killings, arresting three local men in Tajikistan for Ilyas's murder and suggesting his death was a consequence of the criminality and lawlessness pervasive in Russia, or linked to his personal life.
According to Reporters Without Borders, 21 journalists have been killed in the country since 2000. The existence of a free press remains an illusion in post-communist Russia.
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