31 January 2011, 14:00
Ruslan Umarov detained in Italy asks for political asylum
Ruslan Umarov aged 35, supposed brother of Dokku Umarov, one of the leaders of armed underground in Northern Caucasus, detained in the North of Italy several days ago appealed to Italian authorities with a request of political asylum.
It should be reminded that the personnel of Italian law enforcement bodies took Ruslan Umarov off a train while crossing the Italian border at a railway station of Mestre in Venice.
For several days he was kept in a special centre for illegal immigrants in the neighborhood of Horitsia, near Trieste, but he was not moved to a specially guarded building for the detained suspected of planning an escape, regional newspaper “Piccolo Trieste” reports.
Officials of the Consular Department of the Russian Embassy in Rome stated that they “had not received any official information or requests” concerning Ruslan Umarov’s detention, ITAR-TASS reports.
There is an information on one of the web-sites supporting North Caucasian gunmen that the person detained in Italy is not Dokku Umarov’s brother. The leader of “The Caucasus Emirate” does really have a brother named Ruslan but he is at large outside Chechnya and has never been to Europe, a statement on one of the web-sites supported by North Caucasian gunmen runs.
