By Tim Binnall
A Russian man murdered an alleged mystic over fears that the suspected soothsayer had cast a spell on his brother. According to a local media report, the curious killing occurred on July 29th in the town of Sunzha when three men burst into the victim's home and shot him multiple times. Although they quickly fled the scene, authorities eventually caught the perpetrators, one of whom offered a rather unusual explanation for the deadly incident.
Seemingly confessing to the crime, the suspect told police that the victim was a mystic who had cursed his brother. Believing that the only way to overturn the magic spell was to slay the sorcerer who had cast it, the man recruited two friends, who helped him pull off the dastardly deed. The trio is currently in custody with murder charges presumably pending. Chillingly, an expert on the North Caucasian republics reportedly indicated that the case may be part of a broader, more worrisome trend against purported practitioners of the proverbial dark arts.
"This has happened in waves, first in Chechnya, where they cleansed the area of fortune-tellers who were supposedly connected with jinn," he explained, "and there were campaigns against witches in Dagestan, as is currently happening in Ingushetia," wherein the community of Sunzha is located. The expert stressed that suspected mystics are often scapegoated when social unrest occurs in a region. "Aggression comes from a general sense of instability, anxiety, and so on," he mused, "then the witch hunt begins."