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| Caucasus |
| Can a post-Beslan "Chechen backlash" story still belong on Page 2? |
| 2004-09-10 |
| Oh indeed it can. The incident took place near the Vykhino metro station in south-east Moscow on Thursday night. Colonel Magomed Tolboyev was stopped by two police sergeants for a routine document check. After the law enforcers saw the colonel's name, which suggests he is of Caucasian Muslim descent, they started beating him up. The beating stopped only after passers-by called the police station. Before leaving the attackers said: "Get away from here, you black, and tell your kinsmen we will strangle all of you, whatever the cost." Colonel Magomed Tolboyev is a distinguished test pilot; he bears the country's top honorary title Hero of Russia. During his space career Tolboyev was commander of Russia's first and only space shuttle — the Buran. In his comments to the Ekho Moskvy radio station Tolboyev said that he will not bring the case to court as this was below his moral principles. "I am an officer of the Russian Air Force, I do not want to sue this scum," he said. "Apart from that, there are tens of thousands of them, nothing can be done anyway," he added. "I could shake these sergeants off me in a second, but I understood that in this case they would have claimed that I had attacked them first. [and now the money shot...] That is why I only asked them not to hit me on the back — I once fell from high altitude, my whole spine is made of plastic now," the colonel said. On Friday morning, an official spokesman of the Interior Ministry's directorate for Moscow City said that the interior security department had launched a probe into the incident and promised that the results of the probe would be made public. "Yes comrades, it's true. This man has a plastic spine. See? Turn it upside down, and it snows inside." |
| Posted by:Another Dan |
| #4 You should not be pleased. The Moscow police are corrupt, moronic thugs who routinely shake down and beat randomly-selected dark-complexioned "southerners" who appear to be from the Caucasus. |
| Posted by: lex 2004-09-10 1:24:08 PM |
| #3 I'm confused: was he in fact a Caucasian Muslim, or did his name merely suggest it? I can't decide if I'm pleased about this beatdown or not. But at least something's happening. |
| Posted by: BH 2004-09-10 10:28:05 AM |
| #2 The bigger story is the one our incompetent MSM foreign correspondents can't effectively cover: the criminalization of the Russian state. The western hacks who parachute into Moscow every other year don't have any sources in the Russian security services or other branches of the government, they don't speak the language, they merely quote other journalists and "experts" at the Carnegie Foundation rather than dig to get the deeper story. Point here is that Russia needs a thorough overhaul of its rotten state institutions. They are failing massively, and if Russia fails, we fail. |
| Posted by: lex 2004-09-10 10:23:10 AM |
| #1 Anyone who flew in the Buran doesn't lack for guts. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-09-10 9:00:48 AM |