Bio

Achmed Ibragimov was born in 1956. He came from the village of Mikenskaya in Chechnya. Mikenskaya is about 30 miles northwest of Grozny.

After the Soviet Union ended, during privatization in the early 1990s, he bought some farm machinery. He worked as a driver. Later he ran a small shop. He also served for a time as the village postman.

He had a brother who was killed in the First Chechen War. He later lived in Chernokozovo.

Murder Story

On 8 October 1999, in the village of Mikenskaya, at least 34 Russian inhabitants were killed by Ahmed Ibragimov during the Second Chechen War.

After a battle in the area had stopped, people came out of their hiding places. Ibragimov first went to a group sitting on a bench. He talked with them briefly, then took out a Kalashnikov rifle and shot four of them.

He was reportedly drunk. He then moved through the village and shot people he recognized as Russians. He spared those who were Chechens.

He took a bicycle from one of his victims and rode to houses where Russians lived. He called out the inhabitants and shot them. When he wounded people, he shot them again in the head.

The victims were left lying in the streets, in yards, and in their homes. In less than an hour, he had killed at least 34 Russian residents, aged from 10 to 89 years.

Ibragimov fled when he ran out of ammunition. Two days later he was captured by Chechen rebels and handed over to village elders. Without a trial, he was handcuffed to a pole in the village square and beaten to death with iron rods by two Russian brothers whose parents he had killed. His body was left in the street because local mullahs forbade burying him.

Different reports gave higher death tolls. Some sources said 35, 39, up to 41, and some reported he had shot 42 Russians and five Chechens. There were also reports he had killed members of the Allenov family in another village, though that claim may be erroneous.

Named victims included Peter Atarshikov; Zoya Filippovna Andriyenko, a local school teacher; Victor Kakezov; Mariya Ivanovna Maslova; Ekaterina Ivanovna Pyltsina, the village council secretary; Dmitri Radchenko; and Mrs. Tatarenko and her two sons, including 10-year-old Kolya Tatarenko. Families with multiple members killed included the Drobilov, Radchenko, Fedosov, and Pletnev families.

The shooting led the majority of ethnic Russian families in Mikenskaya to leave. On 21 December 1999, Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov was summoned by the Russian General Prosecutor's Office about this shooting and other events in Chechnya. Russian investigators later exhumed the victims' bodies to study the circumstances of the attack.