Alik Sochinsky shot dead

[MosJan]

Armenian kingpin killed in Moscow/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Armenian lord of the underworld Alik Minalyan, 36, better known as Alik Sochinsky, was shot dead on Friday evening in Moscow, Prime Crime reports.

 

The killer shot down Minalyan, threw the gun away and escaped in VAZ-2109 car.

 

The driver of Mercedes, Hovhannes Poghosyan, who brought Minalyan home, received a wound into his back and was taken to hospital.

 

 

[MosJan]

Murder in Moscow ... assassins kill four people in one weekRUSSIA: Spate of contract killings as lawlessness and violence return to Russian capital From John Follett in MoscowAT LEAST four men were cut down in a storm of bullets as a wave of contract killings washed over the Russian capital last week, raising fears that Moscow is reverting to the lawlessness of the 1990s.

 

The murders have raised fears that Chechen death squads are operating in the Russian capital. They have also undermined President Dmitry Medvedev's promise to restore the rule of law. Some of the killings were clearly commercially motivated; others appeared political.

 

The killings on January 19 of human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov, 34, and trainee journalist Anastasia Baburova, 25, are the most high profile and shocking. The pair were murdered in broad daylight on a street less than a mile from the Kremlin by a masked gunman using a pistol fitted with a silencer.

 

advertisement http://ads.newsquest.co.uk/RealMedia/ads/Creatives/default/empty.gif Markelov took on many powerful government and criminal interests in the courtroom. Baburova wrote about Russia's increasingly violent neo-Nazi movement. Like so many other contract killings, nobody has been arrested.

 

The killings have now caught the attention of politicians outside Russia. European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso spoke of the murders at a news conference in Moscow last Friday, much to prime minister Vladimir Putin's anger. Putin has said nothing publicly about the double murder.

 

But last week was a particularly bloody week in Moscow, evoking the 1990s, a decade when businessmen regularly took out contracts on rivals. On Thursday, Gilani Shepiyev, 36, a former deputy mayor of the Chechen capital Grozny, was shot three times in the head outside his home. An hour earlier, a man said to be his bodyguard was shot dead while walking his dog. Another Chechen, Tamerlan Akhmatov, was shot twice in the chest in a courtyard. He too died.

 

Separately, a well-known criminal kingpin from southern Russia, Alik Minalyan, was machine-gunned down as he got out of his Mercedes.

 

The spike in murders appears to be a side-effect of the economic crisis that has hit Russia hard. The result, analysts say, has been increased lawlessness. But many of the murders appear to have a Chechen connection, raising questions about the Kremlin's control of one of the country's most volatile regions.

 

Liberal newspaper Novaya Gazeta has published eyewitness testimony of a disturbing incident in Moscow that appears to confirm that Chechen hit squads are roaming the Russian capital. Armed with Stechkin pistols and police or FSB security service identification passes, the Chechens appear to operate with impunity.

 

A Moscow bus driver told the paper he was badly beaten by two Chechen policemen. They dragged him from the bus and beat him in the middle of the street in front of his passengers, he said. The driver managed to fight them off with a crowbar but was later hospitalised.

 

In 2006, Movladi Baisarov, a former Chechen warlord and FSB security service commander, was shot dead during the rush hour in central Moscow. That same year, investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya, who often wrote about Chechnya, was shot dead in her Moscow apartment block. Last September, the powerful Chechen politician Ruslan Yamadayev was murdered in his car.

 

People who used to work with Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed president of Chechnya, say he has a list of 300 people he wants dead. Kadyrov's aides say such allegations are part of a campaign to blacken his name.

 

On January 13, Umar Israilov, 27, was shot dead in Vienna. A former bodyguard for Kadyrov, he had fled to Austria and had filed a case at the European Court of Human Rights against Kadyrov. His filing alleged he saw Kadyrov torture, order opponents' murder, and more. Austrian police have arrested a group of Chechen refugees in connection with his murder.

 

 

[MosJan]

In Moscow, the fourth shot in two days comes from the Caucasus, allegedly criminal authority

 

In the west of the capital killed a man, Interfax reports with reference to the law enforcement capital. Unknown at the entrance to the house of 7 Action streets between buildings 1 and 2 shot people from the Caucasus, and then threw the weapon at the crime scene. From his wounds he died at the scene of the crime. The murderer escaped from the scene by car VAZ 2109. At the scene of the work promptly, the investigation team.

 

This source of RIA "News" is the name of the deceased: this 36-year-old native of Sochi Alik Minalyan. According to the media, 36-year-old Minalyan Hostinskom lived in the area of Sochi and was known in criminal circles as "Aliq Sochi. In spring 2007, it was detained, reportedly with a weapon - he seized the Makarov pistol equipped with a charger, and in the trunk of the car was found a weapons arsenal. The court sentenced Minalyana for illegal possession of weapons by year's imprisonment on probation.

 

According to the RIA, was also injured the driver, who brought in Mercedes Minalyana to the house where he rented an apartment. Is also called, and his name - is a man Avanesov Pogasyan. He was wounded in the back and asked for help in one of the urban clinics. The doctors have advised of the incident the police officers who put safety at the Chamber Pogasyana and are currently questioning him.

 

According to witnesses, a killer escaped in a car VAZ-2109, where his waiting accomplice.

 

At the 37-year-old criminal authority already attempted in 2006 in Moscow on Krasnopresnenskaya embankment. Then he and his driver wounded.

 

"In law enforcement agencies note that its activities increased in connection with the preparation of Sochi for Olympic Games ", - said interlocutor Interfax.

 

Over the past two days is already the fourth contract killing in the capital.

 

Thus, the evening of 5 February in the yard of the house 7 on the street the Soviet Army out of a pistol shot an unidentified 35-year-old born in the city of Grozny Tamerlan Akhmatova. Death of man come from two gunshot wounds to the abdomen.

 

The same day, about an hour the night killer shot at home near the capital of West 21 Street Krylatskoe hills of the former vice-mayor of the city of Grozny Gelani Shepieva. Since the offender fled the scene, throwing down their arms.

 

An hour before the assassination Shepieva the house number 59 on Leningradsky Prospekt was shot Kakha Kalandarishvili. According to some reports, he was a security guard shot Shepieva.

 

Hold any of the perpetrators have not yet succeeded. Investigators of all murders are considering ordering a basic version of the killings.

Posted by Toni Morrison at 7:00 AM