NAZRAN, Russia (AFP) — Security forces early Tuesday broke up a rare protest in Russia's turbulent Ingushetia province over the fatal shooting in custody of prominent critic Magomed Yevloyev.
Hundreds of protesters gathered near the bus station in the main town of Nazran where Yevloyev's body was laid out.
They demanded the resignation of Ingush leader Murat Zyazikov, who had come under bitter attack on Yevloyev's website.
Police and special forces arrived Tuesday morning in two trucks, firing warning shots and hitting the demonstrators with batons to disperse them. No injuries were immediately reported.
Yevloyev, who owned the critical news website www.ingushetiya.ru, was fatally shot in a police car on Sunday after being arrested upon arrival at the local airport.
Opposition activists have said that Zyazikov was travelling to Nazran from Moscow on the same flight as the opposition leader and was nearby when Yevloyev was arrested at the steps of the plane.
Opposition activists have questioned the authorities' claims that his death was accidental and are demanding a murder enquiry.
"This is an act of state terror," a senior member of the Memorial human rights organisation told Moscow Echo radio, adding that the authorities had "thrown away the mask of observance of legality."
On Sunday Interfax news agency quoted a spokesman for the prosecutor's office, Vladimir Markin, as saying "an incident" took place after Yevloyev was taken into a police car "resulting in a shooting injury to the head and he later died in hospital."
Interfax also quoted an Ingush police source as saying that on the journey from the airport "a shot was involuntarily fired from a policeman's gun and the bullet hit Yevloyev's head."
Yevloyev was a vocal critic of Zyazikov, a Kremlin appointee and secret services veteran who observers say has lost the support of the public in his restive region, which borders war-torn Chechnya.
Ingushetia regularly experiences insurgent attacks on police and other security personnel.
But street protests are rare and have been violently dispersed several times over the last year.
In Vienna, the International Press Institute, a global media rights federation, urged Russia to conduct a "prompt and thorough investigation into Yevloyev's death".
Its director David Dadge recalled that during his election campaign, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had "repeatedly promised to improve Russia's hostile media environment".
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