Posted on 03/09/2015 3:53:10 PM PDT by tlozo
MOSCOW—President Vladimir Putin gave an award to the governor of Chechnya, one day after the strongman leader of the Caucasus region hailed the accused killer of a prominent opposition leader as “a true patriot.”
A Kremlin spokesman said Monday that the timing of Ramzan Kadyrov ’s award was coincidental...had been planned for months.
But Kremlin critics saw the award as a sign of official endorsement of Mr. Kadyrov’s assertion that the accused killer of Boris Nemtsov was motivated by anger at the opposition politician’s comments in defense of the French cartoonists from Charlie Hebdowho were killed in January by Islamists angry at their mocking depictions of the Prophet Muhammad.
“Our worst fears are being realized,” Ilya Yashin, a longtime Nemtsov ally, wrote Monday in a Facebook post. “A scapegoat will be held responsible for the crime and those who really ordered it—within the government—will remain free.”
Investigators detained five suspects... all ethnic Chechens. One of the five, Zaur Dadayev, served as a senior officer in a police unit in Chechnya and received several awards for bravery...
In a statement late Sunday, Mr. Kadyrov said he knew Mr. Dadayev as a brave fighter for Russia but noted Mr. Dadayev had resigned from the police unit some time ago. Mr. Kadyrov suggested that Mr. Dadayev had been insulted by Mr. Nemtsov’s comments in defense of the French cartoonists and critical of the fundamentalist Muslims who had attacked them.
A second Chechen police veteran blew himself up with a grenade in the regional capital of Grozny late Saturday, reportedly as police closed in to arrest him in the Nemtsov case. Mr. Kadyrov also praised him as a “brave warrior.”
Mr. Yashin said Mr. Nemtsov’s comments on the Charlie Hebdo case in January were relatively mild. “Nemtsov criticized the killers, but never criticized Islam.”
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Devout Muslims to boot.
I remember someone with initials reminiscent of an abbreviation for “peanut butter” saying that Russia is our “natural ally” against radical Islam. Why did he say that?
Pat Buchanan enjoys worshipping the world's Putins.
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