Pro-Russian Chechen Official Gunned Down

Attackers gunned down a pro-Russian police official in one of Chechnya’s most volatile southern towns, news reports said Sunday.

Col. Shamil Azayev, deputy chief of police in Vedeno, was killed Saturday night when unidentified gunmen drove by his home and opened fire with automatic rifles, the Interfax news agency reported.

Rebel forces frequently target pro-Russian officials in Chechnya to intimidate them and keep them from cooperating with the Kremlin. Vedeno, in Chechnya’s southern mountains, is surrounded by rebel-controlled territory, and the Russian forces’ grip there is shaky.

The rebels occupy much of southern Chechnya, and have had little trouble launching ambushes and raids there and in the Russian-controlled north.

Also Sunday, military officials forcibly stopped a live broadcast from the federal headquarters in Chechnya’s capital, Grozny, on the NTV nationwide TV network.

A crew from privately owned NTV, a critic of the Kremlin, was interviewing an officer who claimed he had watched servicemen throw an NTV cameraman to the ground and pin him down to keep him from filming an outspoken pro-Russian Chechen leader, Bislan Gantamirov.

In the middle of the live spot on the “Itogi” weekly news program, a hand covered the camera lens, while the reporter protested. The link was soon cut off.

But it was unclear who in the military blocked the filming and why. The military headquarters could not be reached for comment Sunday night.

The military has strictly controlled media coverage of the war, citing safety reasons, and has occasionally detained and questioned Russian and foreign journalists.

The incident came a day after the head of the pro-Russian civilian government in Chechnya, Akhmad Kadyrov, criticized the Russian military for its harsh actions in the republic.

Meanwhile, a delegation from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe arrived in Moscow on Sunday to check on human rights in Chechnya, Russian news reports said.

The assembly, which has sent several delegations to Chechnya, has sharply criticized the Russian army’s human rights record, and suspended Russia’s voting rights in the assembly in protest this spring.

Russian forces returned to Chechnya a year ago after rebel raids on a neighboring region and four bomb blasts across Russia that killed about 300 people.

Russia blamed the blasts on Chechen rebels, although no one has been convicted of involvement in the explosions.