Caucasus Report

The team of lawyers representing former Makhachkala Mayor Said Amirov, once one of the most powerful men in Daghestan, and his nephew, Yusup Dzhaparov, has appealed the prison terms handed down to the two men on July 9.

The North Caucasus District Military Court in Rostov-na-Donu found them guilty of plotting a terrorist act and sentenced them to 10 and 8 1/2 years in jail respectively. It took the three presiding judges 2 1/2 hours to pronounce the verdict which they took turns to read.

Amirov and Dzhaparov had both pleaded not guilty to the charge that they acquired a surface-to-air missile with a view to shooting down an aircraft in which Sagid Murtazaliyev, head of the Daghestan subsidiary of the Federal Pension Fund, would be travelling.

In his final address, Amirov dismissed the charge against him as utter rubbish, based on rumor, wholly unsubstantiated, and politically motivated. He stressed that he had no motive for wanting to kill Murtazaliyev.

Dzhaparov, for his part, claims he was beaten on the back of the head during the pre-trial investigation and subjected to electric shocks. He said he was warned that he would receive a life sentence if he refused to incriminate his uncle.

Procedural Violations

The half dozen defense lawyers pinpointed 108 separate procedural violations in the course of the pre-trial investigation and the two-month trial that began on April 24. They also highlighted contradictions in the indictment and in the testimony of witnesses for the prosecution. The judge dismissed those violations and discrepancies as insignificant.

The prosecution's case was based primarily on the testimony of one man, Magomed Abdulgalimov, a former assistant to the Khasavyurt city prosecutor. Abdulgalimov (aka Kolkhoznik) is also the key witness in a second case in which Amirov and Dzhaparov are suspected of commissioning the murder in December 2011 in Kaspiisk of investigator Arsen Gadzhibekov. It was in connection with that murder that the two were first arrested in June 2013.

Abdulgalimov was arrested in October 2012 on a charge of embezzlement. According to his lawyer, Sergei Kvasov, investigators only began questioning Abdulgalimov about his links with Amirov in late January-early February 2013. It was at that time that Russian President Vladimir Putin appointed Ramazan Abdulatipov as Republic of Daghestan acting President in place of Magomedsalam Magomedov.

Abdulgalimov said in court in late April that he had been tortured during the pre-trial investigation.

Abdulgalimov testified that Dzhaparov, with whom he was on friendly terms, introduced him to 'Amirov, who asked him to procure a portable antiaircraft missile launcher, which Abdulgalimov says he eventually purchased for $150,000 from a Chechen acquaintance. Abdulgalimov says that in return for his help, Amirov promised him the post of Kaspiisk mayor. But instead of handing the weapon over to the two accused, Abdulgalimov said he buried it in Karabudakhkent Raion, just south of Makhachkala. Video footage of the missile being dug up is part of the prosecution's case.

The prosecution further claims that -- that at a second meeting, which took place at the mayor's office in Makhachkala -- Amirov asked Abdulgalimov to find someone trained to fire the missile, and disclosed that it was to be used to kill Murtazaliyev. At that juncture, according to the prosecution, Abdulgalimov got cold feet and warned Murtazaliyev of the preparations to kill him.

Amirov's lawyers, however, produced records in court of the mobile phone calls made by Dzhaparov, Amirov and Abdulgalimov on April 26, 2012, the day Abdulgalimov claims the second meeting took place. Those records show the three men could not have met as neither Abdulgalimov nor Dzhaparov was in Makhachkala that day. (Dzhaparov was in Kaspiisk.) Those two had, however, exchanged phone calls.

The defense lawyers also summoned as witnesses Tamara Kanayeva, who was in charge of Amirov's appointment calendar, and several persons who did meet with Amirov at his office on April 26. Kanayeva said Abdulgalimov did not have an appointment with Amirov on that day and could not have seen him without one.

Other visitors denied having seen him in the municipal offices that day. One of Amirov's close aides similarly denied ever having seen Abdulgalimov in the mayor's office.

Amirov pointed out that Abdulgalimov's description of the interior of the city hall was incorrect. He said his bodyguards were permanently stationed on the fifth floor of the building, not the fourth floor as Abdulgalimov had claimed.

As for the surface-to-air Strela-2 missile that Abdulgalimov says he transported in his armored Land Cruiser to the hiding place in Karabudakhkent, Amirov's lawyers say that two separate protocols describe the weapon as having a different size and shape. They claimed the weapon dug up was in fact an Igla missile measuring 164 x 10 cm, whereas the missile produced in court, which a Federal Security Service (FSB) specialist testified was in working order, was a Strela -2. They produced wooden mock-ups of both missiles in court, but the judge refused to allow an experiment to determine whether either would have fit into the trunk of the vehicle in question.

Equally problematic were the prosecution's efforts to demonstrate why Amirov should have wanted to kill Murtazaliyev. Murtazaliyev testified in court that Amirov had asked him to write off billions of rubles in unpaid contributions to the Pension Fund owed by companies Amirov controlled, but witnesses for the defense said no such debts to the Pension Fund existed.

Other witnesses for the prosecution suggested that Amirov regarded Murtazaliyev as a possible rival in the event of a direct election for the post of president of the republic. Amirov, who was first elected mayor in 1999, is a Dargin, the second largest of Daghestan's 14 titular ethnic groups. Murtazaliyev is an Avar (the largest ethnic group. Avars account for 29.4 percent of the total population of 2.9 million while Dargins account for 17 percent.). In the early 2000s, Murtazaliyev was a prominent member of the so-called Northern Alliance, a group of Avar politicians who sought to oust then President Magomedali Magomedov (a Dargin).

Half a dozen parliamentarians had appealed unsuccessfully in late 2009 to then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to include Amirov's name in a shortlist of candidates to succeed then Republic of Daghestan President Mukhu Aliyev. An opinion poll conducted in the spring of 2013 suggested that Amirov would have defeated acting President Abdulatipov in an open presidential ballot.

Amirov, however, explicitly denied in court that he had ever considered Murtazaliyev (a former Olympic wrestling champion) as a political rival.

Polarized Public Opinion

The gaping holes in the prosecution's case against Amirov, and the fact that he was stripped on the day the verdict was announced of the various state honors he had been awarded in the course of his political career, lend credence to suspicions of a deliberate attempt to compromise and sideline him as a political figure, and possibly even bring about his untimely death in jail.

Amirov, 60, is wheelchair-bound as a result of injuries sustained in 1993 during one of a dozen attempts on his life; he also suffers from diabetes and hepatitis. One Daghestani commentator opined that, given the combined expertise of Amirov's defense lawyers, "the devil himself would have had no trouble getting off scot-free."

What is more, Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin announced on July 9 that the investigation into the involvement of Amirov and Dzhaparov in Gadzhibekov's murder is almost complete. Markin pinpointed as the imputed motive for that murder that Gadzhibekov was investigating crimes committed by Amirov's subordinates. The possibility remains, too, that on the basis of Murtzaliyev's testimony, a third criminal case may be brought against Amirov for withholding mandatory contributions to the Pension Fund.

Public opinion in Daghestan is polarized. Amirov's numerous supporters, not all of them his co-ethnics, remain convinced that he is the innocent victim of a show trial. Others, pointing to the numerous bids over the years to kill him and his nickname "Bloody Roosevelt," are inclined to believe that even if the charge of plotting to kill Murtazaliyev was indeed fabricated, Amirov nonetheless deserves to serve time for other crimes that have not come to light. Or, as blogger gumbetowsxy put it: "There is not enough water in the Caspian to wash clean his sins, and we know it."

-- Liz Fuller

Predictably, the Georgian local elections last month have served to exacerbate the antagonism between the ruling Georgian Dream coalition and the opposition United National Movement (ENM) that it defeated in the parliamentary ballot of October 2012.

The ENM has not only accused the authorities of resorting to deliberate intimidation and fraud, but argues that the July 1 arrest and subsequent detention in custody of former Tbilisi Mayor Gigi Ugulava, the coordinator of the ENM's election campaign, on new charges of misuse of public funds constitutes political persecution.

In addition, the ENM claims that the Central Election Commission violated the law when setting the date for runoff votes for the post of mayor in eight towns and cities and the heads of 13 regional councils (of a total of 59). Electoral amendments enacted in March raised to 50 percent the minimum vote a candidate for the post of mayor or regional council head must garner for an outright win.

The initial voting on June 15 evinced a clear preference for Georgian Dream among the 43.3 percent of the electorate motivated enough to cast ballots. (In the 2010 local elections, turnout was 49 percent). Georgian Dream polled marginally over 50 percent of the vote nationwide, followed by the ENM with 22.41 percent; the United Opposition comprising former parliament speaker Nino Burjanadze's Democratic Movement-One Georgia and Jondi Baghaturia's Kartuli Dasi (Georgian Group) (10.23 percent); the Alliance of Patriots of Georgia (4.71 percent); the Labor Party (3.45 percent); the Nonparliamentary Opposition bloc (2.25 percent); and Georgia's Way (1.21 percent). None of the remaining 17 parties and blocs received more than 1 percent of the vote.

In Tbilisi, one of the eight towns where the mayoral race went to a second round, Georgian Dream candidate David Narmania polled 46.09 percent of the vote, followed by Nikanor Melia of the ENM with 27.97 percent and Dmitri Lortkipanidze, representing the United Opposition bloc, with 12.81 percent.

By contrast, in an opinion poll conducted in mid-April on behalf of the U.S. National Democracy Institute, 48 percent of those questioned said they planned to vote for Georgian Dream and just 12 percent for the ENM. By the same token, 39 percent of respondents planned to vote for Narmania, 10 percent for Melia and 9 percent for Lortkipanidze.

Both the election campaign and the voting were overshadowed by numerous allegations of foul play. The Tbilisi embassies of the United States, Britain, and the Netherlands, which jointly fielded 95 observers who visited 600 polling stations in 23 electoral districts, nonetheless characterized the actual voting as "successful and well-administered," and as demonstrating "the growing pluralism in Georgian democracy."

The International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED), however, registered a high number of void ballot papers and irregularities in drawing up final vote-summary protocols in hundreds of precincts, and called on June 23 for a vote recount in hundreds of polling stations.

Having assessed over 80 separate formal complaints lodged either by election watchdogs or the ENM and United Opposition, the Central Election Commission annulled the results at 14 polling stations and scheduled repeat voting on June 29.

Turnout for the repeat voting was even lower than on June 15: 36.63 percent. This time, ISFED registered only what it termed "minor technical flaws" that precinct officials sought to redress as they occurred. The NGO Fair Elections similarly described the voting as proceeding "quietly and in an organized fashion." The Central Election Commission said the following day that it had not received any complaints from organizations that monitored the vote.

The ENM nonetheless continues to accuse the authorities of creating unfair conditions for the runoff vote. On July 1, ENM representatives walked out of a session of the Interagency Task Force for Free and Fair Elections to protest what ENM's Zurab Chiaberashvili termed the body's "practice of justifying illegal actions or the inaction of law enforcement agencies" and its alleged failure to investigate violent clashes in the run-up to the June 15 vote or violations on polling day. One week earlier, Deputy Justice Minister Aleksandre Tabatadze had informed the Interagency Task Force that the commission had investigated all the complaints received and that for the first time ever, a criminal case had been opened in connection with malpractice.

The ENM has also played up the fact that the Central Election Commission, whether deliberately or inadvertently, apparently violated the law when scheduling for July 12 the runoff vote in the eight towns and cities and 13 regions where no candidate for mayor of district council head polled the minimum 50 percent of the vote on June 15. Ugulava had urged Central Election Commission Chairwoman Tamar Zhvania on June 23 to announce the runoff date at the earliest opportunity in order to give candidates the maximum time to prepare. Zhvania responded immediately that setting the date was not within her competence and could not be done until all complaints about the first round of voting had been resolved.

The commission duly endorsed the final results of the June 15 voting on July 3 and immediately scheduled the runoff for July 12. The ENM protested that decision, pointing out in a seeming inconsistency that the runoff date should not have been announced until July 9, and that a ruling adopted by the Central Election Commission on June 19 stipulated that a minimum of 10 days should elapse between the announcement and the vote. The party construed that glitch as further evidence that "the Central Election Commission is not serious about holding the second round."

Burjanadze's Democratic Movement–One Georgia, which qualified for the municipal runoffs in Tianeti, Tkibuli, Akhmeta, and Martvili, claimed the constitution required that runoffs should be announced 14 days in advance.

The Tbilisi Municipal Court has nonetheless upheld the Central Election Commission ruling.

ENM parliament member and former Deputy Justice Minister Giorgi Vashadze posited a direct link between the scheduling of the runoffs and Ugulava's arrest, which, Vashadze said, will put his party at a major disadvantage.

Meanwhile, Melia, the ENM's candidate for Tbilisi mayor, has finally agreed to his rival Narmania's proposal to hold televised debates in the run-up to the July 12 vote.

-- Liz Fuller