"Novaya Gazeta": Stavropol law enforcer involved in brutal murder of a Syrian man

Fighters of the private military company known as "Wagner's PMC", including a former law enforcer from the Stavropol Territory, brutally tortured and then killed a deserter of the Syrian government forces, announced the newspaper "Novaya Gazeta" on November 20 the result of its examination of massacre videos.

The first video, in which several fighters in informal uniforms were beating a captured man with a sledgehammer, was published back in June 2017. Meanwhile, in November 2019, three more parts of the video were posted on the Internet, which showed abuse of the body of the murdered man, reported the "Novaya Gazeta" in its article "Cutthroats" posted in the evening on November 20.

The "Novaya Gazeta" posted a video mounted from fragments of the above records. The video shows how fighters were beating with a sledgehammer a man lying on the ground amid the laughter of the other fighters surrounding him. The following video fragments show the body of the murdered man. He is beheaded, and his hands are chopped off with a sapper blade. At the end of the posted video, the body of the murdered man hung upside down was poured with flammable liquid and set on fire, amid mischievous comments in Russian.

The faces of the fighters involved in the massacre are covered with scarves. However, according to the "Novaya Gazeta", at the beginning of the video, a fighter, who was holding a video camera, had not yet managed to cover his face with an arafat scarf.

The "Novaya Gazeta" used the FindClone service and found on the VKontakte social network a photo of a man who looked like a fighter involved in the massacre. The newspaper notes that the man's name, surname, and date of birth coincide with the documented data of one of the intelligence agents of the "Wagner's PMC". According to the "Novaya Gazeta", the VKontakte social network user looks like a former employee of the law enforcement body of the Stavropol Territory.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on November 21, 2019 at 10:58 am MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.