If one listens to stories from persons who migrated from the former USSR to the US, they will say that the USSR frequently had people murdered for saying even small criticisms of the government. Frequently the executions were staged to look like natural deaths, unexplained murders, or suicides, but often were poorly covered up. For example, a man may shoot himself in the head while jumping off of a building. Such things were sadly not all too uncommon.
One of the trends we have noted is the return of European powers to former imperial ways in an attempt to assert themselves in the world. Under President Putin, who has been altering the laws to ensure the revival under a new name but in the same form of the Politburo and thus his political power for life, has expressed much support for Stalin an a desire to revive the USSR.
It is during this politically-charged and interesting time that a major anti-Putin blogger, Imran Aliyev, has been found dead in a hotel in France with his throat cut.
French police believe that the killing of a blogger from the disputed Russian region of Chechnya in a French hotel room last week was “politically motivated,” a French police official briefed on the case said.
The official said the police were now hunting for the blogger’s traveling companion, who disappeared shortly after the killing.
French investigators wish to speak with the Chechen man who accompanied the blogger, Imran Aliev, 44, from his home in Belgium to northern France via train on January 29, the official said.
Aliev, who vocally opposed the Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov and Russian President Vladimir Putin, was found dead the next morning by hotel staff.
His throat had been slit.
Aliev was from Chechnya, the southwestern Russia region that has seen two brutal wars for independence from Russia in recent decades. The region is controlled by Kadyrov, with approval from Moscow.
Aliev had left Belgium, “where he was under police protection because of threats out of Russia and Chechnya over his opposition blogging,” said the senior French police official, who could not be identified in the media because they were discussing an open investigation.
“He was accompanied by another Chechen, who we have tentatively identified based on his travel documents,” the official said.
“This identification could be a case of mistaken identity or even an illegal alibi,” the official said, adding that the police could not determine anything “until we have spoken with this man we believe is an important witness.”
The official refused to identify the man or confirm whether his location had been determined. (source)