MOSCOW – A Russian lawmaker was arrested in parliament in the middle of a session Wednesday in connection with two murders committed eight years ago, an official and news reports said.
Rauf Arashukov, a 32-year-old senator representing the Karachayevo-Cherkessia region of Russia’s Northern Caucasus, is a suspect in the 2010 murders of two people and pressuring a witness to one of the killings, according to investigators.
He allegedly acted as part of an organised group that included his father, said a statement by the Russian Investigative Committee.
Arashukov was on the senate floor when police officers entered and read out a warrant, according to senate speaker Valentina Matviyenko.
“He tried to get up and leave the session. I told him to sit down,” she told state television.
Parliamentary journalists did not witness the arrest as the cameras were turned off without explanation, said a correspondent for Rossiya 24 state TV.
Investigators named the murder victims as Aslan Zhukov, an activist with an organisation representing the Circassian ethnic minority, and Fral Shebzukhov, an advisor to the governor of Arashukov’s Karachayevo-Cherkessia region.
Both were shot dead in 2010, on separate occasions.
