| A radical Islamic activist went on trial Tuesday in Dagestan, the southern Russian region where he is charged with inciting ethnic hatred and attempting to overturn the constitutional order. Magomed Tagayev, one of the spiritual leaders of the region’s strict Wahhabi Islamic community, was an active participant in the fighting between Russian and Muslim rebel forces in Dagestan in August-September 1999 that helped begin the second war in Chechnya in a decade. He had been on the run for four years before capture in April 2004 on Russia’s border with Azerbaijan. Tagayev, 56, had already been imprisoned for five years in Soviet times for agitating for independence for Russia’s Caucasus region. He has pleaded guilty to three charges: using forged documents, assaulting police officers in June 1999 and inciting ethnic hatred. He has denied calling for the overthrow of the constitutional order in two books he had published in Chechnya. |