Slaughtered at the front and stabbed to death: the bloody end of the pogromists in Dagestan
A year and a half after the attempted lynching of Jews and Israelis at the Makhachkala airport, the fate of some of those involved has been revealed: one of the main instigators was murdered in Istanbul and two rioters were killed at the front in Ukraine. At least six other convicted rioters are still fighting in the ranks of the Russian army.
The news of the death of Omar Dzhanburaev, a Russian citizen and father of four children from Dagestan, in the war in Ukraine would not have aroused special interest if not for one detail: Dzhanburaev was one of the rioters who, on October 29, 2023, sought to lynch Jews and Israelis who landed in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, on a flight from Israel.
Dzhanburaev is not the first rioter to be injured or die under unusual, and perhaps even mysterious, circumstances. Earlier this year, it was reported that another participant in the attempted lynching, Muhammad-Said Murtazaliev, was killed at the Ukrainian front. Another Dagestani, Abakar Abakarov, suspected by Russian authorities as a main instigator of the events that led to the attempted lynching, was murdered in Turkey less than a year ago.
A double-edged sword: from the inciting channel to the bloody villa in Istanbul
Abakarov's body was found in a rented villa in Istanbul with signs of knife wounds. The murdered man ran a popular Telegram channel called "Morning of Dagestan" and played—according to Russian investigative bodies—a central role in organizing the pogrom at the Makhachkala airport. In the weeks following the October 7 massacre, the channel became a central arena for publishing extreme anti-Semitic materials. At that time, the channel had at least 66,000 followers, most of them residents of Dagestan.
"Morning of Dagestan" was not the only tool for spreading anti-Semitism. When, on the morning of October 28, 2023, rumors spread in Makhachkala about the arrival of Jews from Israel who would supposedly be accepted as refugees, crowds of excited people began to gather in the streets to "look for the Jews." They beat those who looked like Jews and destroyed property rumored to be Jewish-owned, accompanied by chants of "Allahu Akbar" and "Death to the Jews."
At the peak of the event, the mob broke into the Makhachkala airport building and onto the runway to catch the passengers of the flight from Israel. The lynching was prevented only because the passengers were evacuated in advance. However, the rioters caused great damage to the airport and wounded about 20 police officers and security personnel.
Leniency and the kidnapping machine to the front
No less than 1,200 people took part in the attempted lynching, but most escaped criminal responsibility. Only about 200 rioters were detained, and about 130 were put on trial. The charges against the perpetrators did not reflect the anti-Semitic nature of the event, likely due to the authorities' desire to minimize it. Many defendants were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 6 to 15 years.
At this stage, another factor entered the story—the war in Ukraine. Following a severe shortage of soldiers, Russian authorities began recruiting prisoners. Almost everyone suspected of a crime receives an offer that is difficult to refuse: to "voluntarily" sign a contract with the army and be sent to the trenches of a "special military operation." In return, they receive a pardon and a salary exceeding the Russian average.
According to all evidence, the method works. Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the number of prisoners in Russian prisons has decreased by 40%. Hundreds of thousands of prisoners preferred to "volunteer" for the fighting in the hope of gaining freedom and money. Many of them received a one-way ticket to the killing fields. Sources in Dagestan report that at least 6 convicted rioters are still among the soldiers at the front, while one was returned after being wounded and declared disabled.
The hunt in Turkey and the preacher who escaped the law
The murder of Abakar Abakarov in Istanbul has not yet been solved. Turkish police concluded that the main suspect came with Abakarov to the villa the day before the murder and left it alone. Later, police arrested Ahmed Gazimagomedov, who helped the killer, at the Istanbul airport, but there has been no significant progress in the investigation since.
Some believe Abakarov was liquidated by Russian security services due to his role in building an Islamist network, though other versions, ranging from financial motives to internal feuds, also have grounds. Either way, one leading figure among those who worked to ignite the fire of the pogrom, Salafi preacher Israil Akhmednabiev (Abu Umar Sasitlinsky), is still enjoying freedom. He was sentenced in absentia to a long prison term, but the verdict remains a dead letter as he stays in an unknown location outside Russia.
