Police on Jan. 12 detained suspects in the murder of Amina Okuyeva, a high-profile activist and veteran of the war in eastern Ukraine.
Okuyeva was killed on Oct. 30, 2017, in the village of Hlevakha, 10 kilometers southwest of Kyiv. A group of people shot at her car with automatic guns. Her husband Adam Osmaev, also a war veteran, was in the car but survived the attack.
Okuyeva and Osmaev were famous in military circles. Osmaev is the commander of Dzhokhar Dudayev Battalion, a Chechen volunteer battalion fighting against Russia in eastern Ukraine. He is a Chechen who fled Russia for Ukraine escaping terrorism charges. Okuyeva was a Ukrainian with Chechen roots.
Three years after the attack that killed Okuyeva, police said they arrested a gang of seven people that allegedly organized and performed the murder of Okuyeva and other killings.
According to the National Police, on Jan. 12 they arrested a man who is believed to be the organizer of the murder. According to the police, the man’s DNA was found on the automatic 7.62 caliber rifle left on the site of Okuyeva’s murder.
A handout picture by the National Police of Ukraine shows the arrest of a man suspected to be the organizer of the murder of Amina Okuyeva in October 2017. The man, said to be a member of a gang that performed the murder, was arrested on Jan. 12, 2020.
Other members of the alleged gang have been in detention since September, when they were arrested in connection with two other murders. It wasn’t announced until Jan. 12 that they are suspected of Okuyeva’s murder as well.
However, the police keep looking for those who ordered the murder.
“I thank everyone who participated in solving the murder of Amina and I hope that all the participants will be established and punished,” Osmaev said after the announcement. “Amina never spared herself when defending Ukraine. She always went for the most dangerous parts of the front line. She deserves for her murderers to be punished.”
Okuyeva and Osmaev survived a murder attempt in June 2017. A man posing as a journalist for the French Le Monde newspaper met the couple, allegedly for an interview, and shot at Osmaev. Okueva shot back from her Makarov pistol, injuring the attacker and saving Osmaev.
Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, said that the police suspected that the murder of Okuyeva and attempted murder of Osmaev could be organized either by the Russian special services or by their enemies in the Chechen Republic in Russia.
