Nukhazhiev: attack on pilgrims in North Ossetia had its "producer"

Nurdi Nukhazhiev, Ombudsman for Chechnya, has called on the law enforcement bodies of North Ossetia to bring all those involved in the attack on pilgrims from Chechnya - both performers and organizers - to responsibility.

"Behind any act of such group of people (who attacked Chechen pilgrims in North Ossetia) we should search a guiding producer's hand, because they cannot self-organize in the principle," runs Mr Nukhazhiev's official statement, as quoted by the "Interfax".

Nurdi Nukhazhiev has also declared that in this situation he was concerned "not so much with the unattractive fact itself, but with the demonstrative inactivity of those who's duty was to react immediately."

The "Caucasian Knot" has already informed that Chechnya and North Ossetia were giving contradictory comments on the incident with beating of the pilgrims from Chechnya, who were going in buses from Grozny to Mecca, which happened in the "Kavkaz" federal highway in North Ossetia.

In particular, sources from the District Interior Department (ROVD) of the Pravoberezhny District of North Ossetia assert that the incident with the pilgrims took place not in Stary Terek village but near the memorial cemetery in Beslan. The North-Ossetian party asserts that the column of twenty buses had stopped near the cemetery, where the pilgrims were going to have their toilet. It had displeased local residents, a verbal skirmish burst out, and then stones were thrown at the buses, and some of the Chechens were traumatized.