Source: hro.org (info), 02/03/11

· Ministry of Internal Affairs · Dagestan · Conflict Victims

On 1 March 2011 at 1:00 p.m. on Lenin Street in the Shamkhal area of Makhachkala in the Republic of Dagestan, Magomed Gazimagomedovich Gaziev, born 1992, was abducted. While he was standing in the street talking with friends, two UAZ jeeps and a silver Zhiguli (model 14) drove up. None of the vehicles had number plates. Men in civilian clothes got out of the cars. They seized Magomed and forced him into the Zhiguli. When his friends tried to help him, unidentified persons pointed their guns at them and they were obliged to move away. The abductors gave no explanations. They showed no documents or IDs. They simply got back in the car and drove away to an unknown destination.

As Memorial Human Rights Centre reports, immediately after the abduction, Magomed’s father, Gazimagomed Akhmedovich Gaziev, and his sister, Zulfiya Magomedova, submitted a written appeal to the Shamkhal police department. Police officers told them that they knew nothing about the abductors and did not know whether any special operation was being conducted in the local area.

Magomed's eldest brother, Shamil Gaziev, born 1988, is currently detained in a pre-trial detention facility in Makhachkala charged with committing an act of terrorism in the city of Kizlyar on 30 March 2010. Relatives assume that the abduction of Magomed is linked with the investigation into this crime. Meanwhile, they assert it would have been impossible for Shamil to have taken part in the act of terrorism since he is disabled (he is suffering from Addison's disease).

The Gaziev family are adherents of the Salafi version of Islam, and for that reason, they believe, the law enforcement agencies are interested in them. On the same day, Zulfiya Magomedova submitted a written statement to the Memorial Human Rights Centre asking for help to find her brother and protect the family from unlawful prosecution by law enforcement agencies. “My father worked for 40 years as a high school teacher,” she wrote, “and at present I am also working in the same school. I have been teaching for 13 years. We have no connections at all with either terrorists or extremists.”