Azerbaijani public awaits answers after deadly police shooting

Meydan TV reported that the Interior Ministry stated that the deceased, Alkhas Shikhmatov, who was wanted by the police on several charges, had resisted arrest.

After Meydan TV broke the news, other more critical descriptions of Shikhmatov were circulated.

The pro-government media outlet Lent.az stated that ‘30-year-old Alkhas Shikhmetov, who is considered a radical sectarian and has multiple convictions, wandered around the village with a gun and scared people. His [presence] with an [Islamic State] flag […] greatly alarmed the villagers. With firearms, Shikhmetov resisted police officers who were responding to residents’ complaints, and the situation got out of control. The dangerous radical was eventually killed thanks to the intervention of the police’.

Where the incident occurred, why the local police did not effectively respond, what the residents complained about, why Shikhmetov was wanted in the first place, and why he was ultimately killed, are all unanswered questions.

OC Media discovers a conflicting criminal history of the deceased

Shikhmatov's name first appeared in police reports in Azerbaijan in 2013, when he was 19 years old. At the time, the Interior Ministry said that Shikhmatov had been involved in a robbery in the town of Mujug, in which he and another resident had stolen ₼75 ($44) from another local.

Yeni Musavat, another pro-government media outlet, provided a little more information about the case, but also offered slightly different details, saying that several other perpetrators were also allegedly involved along with Shikhmatov, and that the robbery had occurred in 2015, not 2013. Quoting a Baku court decision, Yeni Musavat wrote that ‘each defendant [was sentenced] to eight years in prison’.

According to a list of rulings from the Supreme Court dated 2014, Shikhmatov and several other individuals were found guilty of armed robbery and sentenced to eight years in prison.

The state-run media outlet AZERTAC reported that the alleged victim of the robbery was a local policeman named Salahaddin Amrullayev, who served as a Chief Inspector for Minors at the Gusar Police Department.

The court’s verdict mentioned that the group of assailants, which included Shikhmatov, conspired to rob Amrullayev in a forest at the edge of the town. The court further added that Amrullayev was struck and threatened with a knife during the robbery.

One of the other assailants was pardoned by President Ilham Aliyev in May 2018 in accordance with the Amnesty Law.

Local residents cast doubt on the official narrative

‘Mujug is not a small village, around 2,000 residents live there. The police department is located around two kilometres away from the village, and police regularly patrol in the village’, a village resident told OC Media. The resident asked to be kept anonymous due to safety concerns.

‘I don’t believe that someone could walk with a gun and an [Islamic State] flag in the village. There may be radicals [there], but there couldn’t be too many. And Mujug is one of the border villages [...] it is two kilometres from the Russian border, from Daghestan.’

The resident said that several months ago, police detained an unknown number of Wahhabis near the forest.

Meydan TV reported that in the last four months, there have been many such cases in the Sabunchu, Binagadi, and Surakhani districts of Baku, where many citizens were shot under the guise of ‘armed resistance to the police.’ Similar incidents occurred two days in a row in the Sabunchu district.

The details of these events are unknown to the public.

OC Media has reached out to the Interior Ministry for a comment on these cases, but have not received any response.