In January, Ingushetia natives Ramzan Padiev and Batukhan Tochiev had been arrested on fees of murdering Lieutenant Common Igor Kirillov, the highest-ranking Russian army authentic to be assassinated for the reason that full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Kirillov and his assistant had been killed in mid-December 2024 when a bomb went off outdoor his condominium construction in southeastern Moscow. Whilst Ukraine’s safety products and services claimed duty for the assassination, Russian officers declare 29-year-old Uzbek nationwide Akhmad Kurbanov performed the homicide with the help of Padiev and Tochiev.
Russian media, mentioning safety forces, recognized the 2 younger males as individuals of the Batal Hajji brotherhood, a closed Sufi Muslim order based by means of Ingush Sheikh Batal Hajji Belkhoroev within the nineteenth century.
Padiev and Tochiev don’t seem to be the primary individuals of the order to were connected to a significant terrorist assault in Russia. Ultimate yr, 4 individuals of the brotherhood had been arrested on suspicion of promoting guns and ammunition to the perpetrators of the fatal March 2024 assault at the Crocus Town Corridor live performance venue, which left 145 other folks lifeless and masses extra wounded.
Regional analysts and human rights defenders agree that the hot allegations towards Batal Hajji individuals are a part of a years-long marketing campaign by means of Russian safety forces geared toward using the once-all-powerful brotherhood underground.
‘The golden generation’
“One can’t develop into a member of the Batal Hajji order, one can most effective be born into it,” defined Isabella Evloeva, an Ingush journalist and founding father of the impartial information outlet Fortanga.
“Despite the fact that you marry anyone from the brotherhood — despite the fact that just a few were in a position to try this — you’re going to by no means develop into part of it,” she mentioned.
Sheikh Batal Hajji Belkhoroev, the spiritual brotherhood’s founder, used to be a student of the Chechen Muslim mystic Kunta-Hajji (Kunta Kishiev). This dating translated right into a bond between their respective fans that might affect the religion of Belkhoroev’s fans centuries later.
As a result of Batal Hajji Belkhoroev adversarial his native land’s career by means of Russia, Tsarist government despatched him to compelled exile within the modern day Kaluga area, the place he died in 1914.
Handiest one of the most Sheikh’s seven sons, Qureysh Belkhoroev, survived next Bolshevik repressions, turning into the only bearer of the Belkhoroev lineage. Nowadays, his descendants suppose the main positions within the order this is estimated to have round 20,000 individuals.
“Participants of the Batal Hajji brotherhood frequently don’t determine as Ingush. They’re an excessively closed-off crew,” mentioned Evloeva. “Prior to now, they wouldn’t consume meals ready by means of different Ingush or purchased from a shop. They might cook dinner one at a time. Are you aware the Muslim idea of halal? For them, anything else ready by means of instead of their very own used to be regarded as now not halal.”
Batal Hajji brotherhood individuals & supporters MT
Chechen-Ingush political analyst Islam Belokiev likened the Ingush order to the Amish, excluding that the previous “don’t reject trendy conveniences and garments.”
“Their harmony allowed them to live on the most harsh years of repression by means of the Tsarists after which the Soviets,” Belokiev advised The Moscow Occasions. “When the chance arose, they started enticing in entrepreneurship…They become extremely influential figures in Ingushetia, making enemies but additionally discovering many keen trade companions.”
The Batal Hajji order’s “golden generation” coincided with the native presidency of Murat Zyazikov, when brotherhood individuals occupied key executive roles but additionally received a close to monopoly on Ingushetia’s building trade, in line with journalist Evloeva.
The primary caution indicators of the brotherhood’s possible downfall got here when the Kremlin appointed army guy Yunus-bek Yevkurov to move Ingushetia in 2008.
“Infrequently, they confronted raids — infrequently their jewellery shops or different companies can be raided, and treasured pieces confiscated,” recalled Evloeva. “However there used to be not anything just like the repressions going down now. The crackdown in point of fact started after the homicide of Ibragim Eldzharkiev.”
‘An act of revenge’
On Dec. 31, 2018, Ibragim Belkhoroev, the great-grandson of the order’s founder, used to be killed in a taking pictures assault on his automotive in Nazran, Ingushetia’s biggest town.
Media and observers speculated that the homicide can have been connected to Batal Hajji’s war with Ibragim Eldzharkiev, the pinnacle of Ingushetia’s Heart for Combatting Extremism, a unique unit inside Russia’s Internal Ministry.
Lower than two weeks after Ibragim Belkhoroev’s homicide, Eldzharkiev’s automotive used to be attacked by means of gunmen close to the border with Chechnya. The incident left 3 policemen injured, whilst Eldzharkiev emerged unscathed.
In November 2019, Eldzharkiev and his brother had been shot lifeless at a car park in a residential group in Moscow. The safety officer’s homicide used to be right away connected to his standoff with individuals of the Batal Hajji brotherhood, triggering house searches and mass arrests of the Sufi order’s individuals.
11 males had been arrested in reference to Eldzharkiev’s homicide. Fees towards them integrated “management and participation in a terrorist crew,” despite the fact that Russian government added the Batal Hajji order to their now-extensive record of terrorist organizations after the courtroom lawsuits already started.
“The repressions [against Batal Hajji order members] had been an act of revenge by means of legislation enforcement government. They didn’t forgive the homicide of a high-ranking police officer,” mentioned journalist Evloeva, noting that “no member” of the order has ever skilled the similar stage of drive.
“All high-ranking [order members] misplaced their positions — deputies, businessmen, ministers — everybody that they had in energy. And what’s nonetheless going down these days is a right away end result of the homicide of Ibragim Eldzharkiyev,” she added, relating to the implication of the brotherhood’s individuals within the Crocus Town Corridor assault and the homicide of Common Kirillov.
The Chechen patron
In November 2022 — amid contemporary arrests of high-ranking individuals of the Batal Hajji order — Chechen chief Ramzan Kadyrov launched a video by which he known as individuals of the brotherhood sufferers of a “coordinated smear marketing campaign.”
“To me…fans of the esteemed Batal Hajji have all the time been and can all the time stay shut brothers,” Kadyrov mentioned in a video the place he seemed seated subsequent to Akhmed Belkhoroev, a former member of Ingushetia’s parliament and one of the most order’s main figures.
“If they’re terrorists, then I’m terrorist primary. If they’re a cult, then I’m the cult’s primary member as a result of we’re of 1 religion,” Kadyrov added, relating to the order’s hyperlink with Chechen mystic Kunta-Hajji.
Regional officers connected to the standoff MT
Participants of Batal Hajji have lengthy maintained a detailed dating with Kadyrov. In 2014, Kadyrov even ordered the naming of a significant mosque in Chechnya after Sheikh Batal Hajji Belkhoroev.
Amid the repressions, many individuals of the Ingush order sought safe haven in Chechnya, the neighboring republic dominated by means of Kadyrov with an iron fist.
Political analyst Belokiev mentioned Kadyrov’s willingness to simply accept the outcasts used to be purely an issue of industrial pursuits, some great benefits of which may well be reaped after normality is restored in Ingushetia.
“On the time many believed that the repression towards the Batal Hajji brotherhood would quickly subside, particularly since Kadyrov himself had intervened on their behalf. However that used to be now not the case,” mentioned Belokiev.
In December 2022, the primary crew of volunteer combatants enlisted within the Batal Hajji Speedy Reaction Unit, part of Kadyrov’s Akhmat army unit inside the Russian military, used to be despatched to the entrance strains in Ukraine’s Kherson area.
Round 100 individuals of the order have joined Kadyrov’s forces combating in Ukraine, in line with Meduza.
Regardless of the picture spice up that assisting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may supply to each the outcast order and Kadyrov himself, patronage of Batal Hajji individuals may just nonetheless come at a value for Chechnya’s chief.
Via linking the brotherhood’s individuals to the Crocus Town Corridor assault — which Russian officers declare used to be orchestrated by means of Islamic State associate ISIS-Ok — government are necessarily drawing a hyperlink between the Sufi order and world terrorist organizations, analysts say.
“[For Russian security forces], this is a chance to undermine and discredit Kadyrov, portraying him as anyone who helps terrorists allegedly accountable for the assault on Crocus Town Corridor,” mentioned Belokiev. “Kadyrov is aware of [how this could play out] and already discussed in non-public circles that he would now not settle for Batal Hajji individuals accused of sporting out the Crocus Town Corridor assault or the homicide of Kirillov.”
Kadyrov’s hyperlinks with Batal Hajji apart, some parallels between the destiny of the Chechen country and that of the brotherhood are tough to not realize.
At the entrance strains in Ukraine, individuals of the order may just face their very own in struggle as a couple of “were combating towards Russia on Ukraine’s facet since 2014,” in line with Belokiev, a former press secretary for the Chechen Sheikh Mansur Battalion that fights for Kyiv.
And the location for the ones final at house rings with reference to the destiny of Chechens in Russia within the Nineteen Nineties and 2000s.
“Throughout the struggle in Chechnya, there used to be a bent in charge all crimes in Russia on Chechens…The tale with the Batal Hajji order is identical,” mentioned journalist Evloeva. “They’re merely being scapegoated. This is sort of a witch hunt.”
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