19 December 2017
Ilyas Sharipov, the leader of the ‘Balakhani’ militant group, has been killed during a counter-terrorist operation in Daghestan’s Gumbet District. The 38-year-old man was the brother one of the women who blew themselves up in the Moscow Metro in 2010.
A counterterror operation regime in the district started on the night of 19 December, and had been lifted by 10:00 the following morning.
The operation took place in a forest near the village of Igali, and left two men dead. Investigators are still working at the spot.
What is a counterterrorism operation regime
The 2006 law ‘On counteracting terrorism’, allows security services to declare a counterterrorism operation regime giving them the right to:
- Check identity documents and detain anyone who cannot produce them
- Control and suspend telephone and other communications
- Access and enter all premises without a warrant
- Commandeer official and private vehicles at will
- Set up checkpoints to restrict movement of vehicles and people
- Introduce a quarantine
- Remove people and objects from the operation zone
- Restrict the sale of weapons, ammunition, explosives, drugs, and alcohol.
A source in Daghestan’s law enforcement told OC Media the men were offered a chance to surrender, but they opened fire on security services. The source said the identity of the second man killed is not yet known. There were no police or civilian casualties.
‘One of the men killed is Ilyan Sharipov, a native of Balakhani village in Untsukul District. He was the leader of the ‘Balakhani’ organised group. In 2010, his sister blew herself up at a metro station in Moscow. Since that year, Sharipov was on a federal wanted list’, the source told OC Media.
2010 Moscow Metro bombing
On 29 May 2010, two metro station in Moscow were shaken by deadly bomb blasts — the Lubyanka and Park Kultury stations.
The attack left 40 people dead, 26 in Lubyanka and 14 in Park Kultury; 88 people were hospitalised.
Five days after attack, village teacher Rasul Magomedov came to the Prosecutor's Office in Untsukul District and identified his 28-year old daughter, Maryam Sharipova, as one of the bombers. Her parents claimed that a day before the bombing she was in Daghestan, contradicting the official version of events that the bombers came to Moscow by bus from Kizlyar.
The source in Daghestani law enforcement told OC Media Sharipov was ‘involved in the bombing in Makhachkala on 1 May 2013’. A box containing explosives, detonated near the Leninsky District Prosecutor’s Office, killing two schoolboys. Sharipov was also involved in extorting money from local entrepreneurs, the source said.
Caucasian Knot wrote that in May 2010, Sharipov appealed for protection from officials: then head of Daghestan Magomedsalam Magomedov, Daghestan’s Prosecutor General Andrey Nazarov, and Russia’s Human Rights Commissioner Vladimir Lukin. Sharipov claimed he was being groundlessly persecuted by the law enforcement agents.
