The religious leader was assassinated Sunday morning when he was returning from a mosque. “His active struggle against Wahhabism in the region is one of the main reasons for Ismail Bostanov’s murder,” ITAR-TASS learnt at the Karachai-Cherkessia Interior Ministry.
“The murder could be committed only on religious grounds. He was not a businessman and was not engaged in any other activities; he was a deeply religious man, and I have no other versions,” contended chairman of the North Caucasian Coordination Centre of Muslims Ismail Berdiev.
Bostanov was Martyred in downtown Cherkessk this Sunday. His car stopped at traffic lights when unidentified people shot at it with firearms. Bostanov was killed on the spot, while his son was wounded. A criminal case was instituted under the articles “Murder” and “Illicit arms trafficking” of the Russian Criminal Code. An investigation group is working at the place of the incident.
Bostanov had been deputy chairman of the Muslim spiritual board for over 20 years and had headed the Islam Institute for more than ten years. In December 2006, there was an attempt on his life: three masked armed attackers stormed into his house in Cherkessk, knifed him and wounded with firearms. His wife was roughed up brutally.
This is already the fifth assassination of religious leaders in the North Caucasus over the current year. Mullah Musa Esmurziev, well-known Ingushetia religious leader, was Martyred by shooting from a grenade launcher in Nazran last April. Some time later, authoritative religious leaders Said-Khasan Saidibrakhim and Abdurakhman Kartoyev, 85, were Martyred also in Ingushetia.
Deputy Mufti of Dagestan Akhmed Tagayev was killed in Makhachkala last May.
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