An outspoken Chechen blogger who had criticised the country’s leader Ramzan Kadyrov has been found brutally murdered in a hotel room in Lille, France. Imran Aliev, 44, was stabbed repeatedly in the neck. Police are investigating a possible political motive.
Aliev, who lived in Belgium, published YouTube videos critical of the Chechen government under the pseudonym Mansur Stariy. He had received threats on his life, including recent ones from natives of Ingushetia over insulting remarks about a border conflict.
According to a lawyer who knew Aliev, the blogger had received a visitor from Chechnya several days before his death. The man asked for help with a health condition, and the two travelled together to Lille, where Aliev was last seen alive. The man then disappeared. Another Chechen blogger, Minkail Malizaev, claimed the same visitor sought a meeting with him.
The murder is the latest in a series of assassinations of Chechen dissidents in Europe. Last year, a former rebel commander was shot in Berlin. Some Chechen exiles expressed doubt that Kadyrov was directly behind the killing, noting Aliev’s conflicts with Ingush activists.
Aliev had political asylum in Belgium. Musa Taipov, a Chechen opposition journalist, described him as a “difficult but honest” acquaintance who was managing a serious illness. Taipov often urged him to delete provocative YouTube videos, to which Aliev “most of the time agreed”.
