MOSCOW, August 8 (RIA Novosti) – Police in Russia’s North Caucasus are investigating a death threat against a senior Muslim cleric, the Interior Ministry said Thursday.
On Wednesday the mufti of the Stavropol Region told police he had received a letter containing a death threat.
The ministry said a criminal investigation had been opened, but did not provide any other details.
Attacks on senior Muslim clerics have become increasingly frequent in Russia’s republics in recent years, especially in the volatile North Caucasus.
In late December, North Ossetia’s deputy mufti Ibragim Dudarov was murdered in the republic’s capital of Vladikavkaz. Last August, Muslim cleric and prominent Sufi sheikh Said Atsayev, 74, was killed in a suicide bombing in the turbulent North Caucasus republic of Dagestan. Last July, the head mufti in Russia’s republic of Tatarstan, Ildus Faizov, was injured in a car bomb attack, hours after his former deputy was shot dead.
