Insurgents arrested in the turbulent North Caucasus region should be tried elsewhere in Russia, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Wednesday, part of a series of moves to tackle a growing wave of attacks.
In a tough speech to security officials following a bomb attack on a police station in Ingushetia in which 25 people were killed, Medvedev said insurgents should be wiped out “without emotion or doubt.”
He also proposed curbing the types of cases that can be heard by juries, a move activists said could strike a fatal blow to efforts to reform the country’s weak court system.
Intensifying violence in the North Caucasus, where Russia has fought two wars with Chechen separatists since the early 1990s, is viewed by the Kremlin as a security threat spreading through the country.
“Some time ago we got the impression the situation in the Caucasus concerning terrorist attacks had improved,” Medvedev told the meeting in the southern Russian city of Stavropol, according to an official transcript.
“Unfortunately, recent events show this is not so,” he said, referring to Monday’s attack, the deadliest in the North Caucasus in four years. “We must continue fighting terrorists without sentiment, killing them without emotion or doubt.”
Twenty-five people were killed and nearly 140 were wounded in the latest attack when a suicide bomber blew up a truck filled with explosives at a police station in Nazran, a spokesman for Ingushetia’s leader said on Wednesday.
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