By David Sophrin
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

MOSCOW, Russia – The killing of a Russian Orthodox priest last month was the responsibility of a Islamist militant group based in the Northern Caucasus region, according to the website of the separatist group’s leader.

Doky Ymarov, the separatist leader, declared on his website earlier this week that “one of our brothers who has never been to the Caucasus took up the oath of [Doky Ymarov] and expressed desire to execute the damned Sysoyev.”  The identity or affiliation of the shooter who killed Daniil Sysoyev, the Orthodox priest, last month in the Saint Thomas Church in Moscow has yet to be confirmed.

Ymarov went on to explain that the killing of Sysoyev was brought on by his distribution of pamphlets viewed as insulting to Islam.  “Those in the future who defame Islam and insult the religion of Allah will suffer the fate as Sysoyev.”  Ymarov has pledged to unite the various militant Islamist groups in the Caucasus region towards achieving the goal of establishing a separate nation governed by Islamic Sharia law.

Sysoyev had received past death threats for his efforts to convert Muslims to Christianity, as well as his books on his observations of the Russia’s responses to Islam’s presence in Russia, entitled “An Orthodox Response to Islam”.  Sysoyev also published a text encouraging Russian women against marrying Muslim men.

The death of Sysoyev marks the second death of a Russian Orthodox priest in the last two months.  Additionally, according to the Interfax News Agency there have been twenty-six Orthodox priests killed in Russia since 1990.  The Caucasus region has also seen the killing of a number of Islamic clerics in recent years.  The killings of religious leaders have heightened the tensions between the Russian Orthodox Church and the more than twenty million Muslims currently in Russia.

For more information, please see:

AFP – Islamists claim killing of Russian priest – 26 December 2009

RADIO FREE EUROPE – Militants Claim Russian Priest Slaying – 26 December 2009

VOA – Wave of Clergy Killings in Russia – 23 December 2009

TELEGRAPH – Russian priest who criticised Islam assassinated in his church – 20 November 2009