Experts associate large-scale CTO regime in Dagestan with Patrushev's visit to Caucasus

Activities of law enforcers in five regions of Dagestan are the result of the visit of Nikolai Patrushev, the Secretary of the Russian Security Council, to Northern Caucasus, and his statements concerning the risk that militants of the "Islamic State" can return to Russia. This opinion has been expressed by experts interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot".

It was reported that in the evening of March 15, the counterterrorist operation (CTO) regime was introduced in the Buynaksk District of Dagestan, and starting from midnight, the territory of the special operation was expanded up to five districts, including the Novolak, Kazbek, Khasavyurt, and Kizilyurt Districts. The area of special measures also included the regional centres of Buynaksk, Kizilyurt, and Khasavyurt.

According to a staff member of the operational headquarters of the National Antiterrorist Committee (NAC) in Dagestan, a complex of special measures is being conducted to search for suspected militants.

On the next day after the introduction of the CTO regime, residents of the districts covered by the special operation reported that it had no immediate impact on their lives. Later, there were reports about the detention of several local residents, in particularly, in Buynaksk and Kizilyurt.

The scale of the special operation indicates that the law enforcers may have information that former fighters of the "Islamic State" could stay on the territory of Dagestan. This opinion was expressed by Akhmet Yarlykapov, the Senior Research Officer of the Centre of Ethno-Political Studies of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS).

Kamilzhan Kalandarov, a member of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation, the General Director of the Institute of Human Rights, has claimed the possible violations of the rights of civilians during the large-scale antiterrorist operation. The expert has called on human rights defenders and journalists to highlight the situation as thorough as possible.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.