There were journalist Anna Politkovskaya and lawyer Stanislav Markelov, both of whom had publicized human rights abuses in Chechnya; the Yamadayev brothers; and Umar Israilov, a former Kadyrov bodyguard who fled to Austria and publicly accused Kadyrov of torturing prisoners, only to be shot down on a Vienna street.
In all of these unsolved slayings, threads stretch back to Chechnya. Kadyrov has staunchly denied involvement. Human rights workers counter that, whether or not Kadyrov was directly implicated, he is guilty of creating an atmosphere of lawlessness and impunity.
The scope of Kadyrov's ambitions is ambiguous. He has hinted that he'd like to preside over a broader swath of the Caucasus, leading observers to conclude that he hopes to gradually extend his authority into Ingushetia and another neighboring republic, Dagestan.
Kadyrov has denied having designs on neighboring lands. Still, there is a fear the fighting in Ingushetia could provide Kadyrov with a justification for expanding his domain.
As violence and fear swell in the Caucasus, observers are beginning to question how much longer the Kremlin can afford to let Kadyrov's power grow -- and whether the destabilization in the southern mountains is leading to another clash with the central government.
Now, however, Moscow may have little choice but to push forward.
Fighting back
Mutsolgov sat in his office, behind him the black and white photos of missing Ingush men and boys. His brother is among the faces -- top row, he points, fourth from the left.
His brother was 28 when he was kidnapped in 2003. He was a physics and mathematics teacher; he spoke four languages. His body was never found.
Around the time of his brother's abduction, Mutsolgov visited the office of the Memorial human rights organization, where he saw a list of more than 1,000 Chechens kidnapped during a two-year period. "I took an oath never to let that happen in Ingushetia," he said.
And so he teamed up with Zurab Tsechoyev, a computer technician whose brother had also been abducted. Together they started MAShR and began to investigate and document kidnappings and attacks in Ingushetia.
Since then, Mutsolgov has been shot at twice. Asked whether he's worried about his safety, Mutsolgov winces and pulls a pistol out of his robe.
As for Tsechoyev, he doesn't bother with a handgun. It wouldn't do any good, he says. When the masked security services came for him last year, they rode in armored personnel carriers, surrounded his house and led him out at gunpoint.
Someone had leaked a list of names of suspected death squad members to the website ingushetiya.ru. The men who came to Tsechoyev's home believed he was to blame; he says they took him to the basement of the FSB headquarters, covered his head with a black plastic bag and tortured him for half a day, trying to force a confession.
In the end, they drove him to an open field and threw him out of the car, threatening to kill him if he didn't leave Ingushetia within a month, he says. He had a broken leg from the beatings, and spent a month in a hospital recuperating from damage to his heart and kidneys.
"They said, if you don't leave Ingushetia, we'll kill first your family and then you," Tsechoyev said. "But I don't want to stop my work. I didn't start my work just to stop like this."
He will stay. He feels he has no choice.
"Kadyrov and his gang, and I have no other word for them, are up to their ears in blood, and the Russian leadership long ago gave them carte blanche to do whatever they want," he said.
"I don't think they'll settle for just Ingushetia. If you give them a finger, they'll bite off your entire arm."
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megan.stack@latimes.com
Times staff writer Sergei L. Loiko contributed to this report.
