Russian Federation: Assassination of human rights defender Mr Maksharip Aushev

Front Line is saddened by the death of Mr Maksharip Aushev in the Russian province of Ingushetia, who was shot and killed on 25 October 2009. Maksharip Aushev was driving on a major highway in the neighbouring province of Kabardino-Balkaria when a passing vehicle reportedly sprayed his car with more than 60 bullets, killing him and seriously wounding a passenger.

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A businessman who had led mass protests against abuses by the government's security forces and was openly critical of human rights violations, Maksharip Aushev became a human rights defender after his son and nephew were reportedly tortured by police in 2007.

Front Line along with other human rights organisations including Civil Rights Defenders and the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society, have issued a joint statement condemning the murder of Maksharip Aushev.

Aushev protested openly against gross violations of human rights in the North Caucasus – abductions, tortures, extrajudicial executions, fabrication of criminal cases, facts of unprecedented corruption in Ingushetia. After his son and nephew had been abducted, Aushev organized civil actions resulting in the release of men. Aushev also managed to reveal a secret prison in the village of Goity in Chechnya where his son and nephew had been beaten and tortured. Evidence suggests that this is the very prison where many who were abducted in Ingushetia were held. Then most of the abducted disappeared. Aushev became the leader of a strong protest movement in Ingushetia that lead to the resignation of Murat Zyazikov's corrupt, repressive and non-effective government. Maksharip had been threatened on multiple occasions, and a month before the murder, unknown militants in armoured vehicles tried to abduct him.

We express our condolences to the family and friends of Maksharip Aushev .

We demand that the Russian authorities investigate this murder effectively and to make those who ordered and executed it, regardless of their status, answer for the crime.

We call on the leaders of the Russian Federation to end the current situation where crimes remain unsolved, and where human rights activists as well as public figures who criticize the actions of officials and law enforcement authorities are persecuted and murdered.