Gasanguseinov says he won't seek meeting with Dagestani head any longer

Murtazali Gasanguseinov has stated today during his picket that he does not want to meet the head of Dagestan, Vladimir Vasiliev, since the latter had called the murder of Murtazali's sons a mistake.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that in his interview to the "Novoye Delo" (New Cause) newspaper, published on January 26, Vladimir Vasiliev expressed his opinion that the Gasanguseinov brothers were killed because of a tragic mistake and not as a result of law enforcers' malicious intent, and noted that "there is a group of people who are inflating the situation hoping to get funding from certain sources." Mr Vasilev's words caused a negative reaction in social networks; and rights defenders demanded to question him within the Gasanguseinovs' murder case.

"He [Vasiliev] has already said everything he could: he called the killing of my kids an occasion and a tragic mistake. He turns out to know the details that are unknown to us; he mentioned SOBR (Rapid Deployment Task Force), which we had not even heard of," Murtazali Gasanguseinov has stated.

He called to interrogate Vasiliev. "I am sure that my children were killed intentionally – there was no occasionality there; everything was set up with the purpose. Once Vasiliev is aware of the circumstances that we don't know, let them interrogate him. The lawyers of the Committee against Torture (CaT) have filed a respective application to the Investigating Committee of the Russian Federation (ICRF)," Murtazali Gasanguseinov has stated.

An employee of the administration staff of the head of Dagestan, who went out to Gasanguseinov, asked if he had any written appeals to the republic's leadership. Gasanguseinov answered that he had no appeals, and he would not seek a meeting with the head of Dagestan.

According to Murtazali, his protests are intended to prevent similar tragedies in the future. "I'll fight to the end against the fact that they made militants out of my sons, I will fight so that other sons are not shot dead in this way, so that their parents not experience what we had," the father of the assassinated shepherds told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on February 1, 2019 at 07:08 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.