Wednesday, February 25, 2009

REPORT: The Changing Landscape of Islam in North Ossetia (jamestown.org)

Publication: North Caucasus Weekly Volume: 10 Issue: 7
February 20, 2009 04:10 PM Age: 4 days
Category: North Caucasus Weekly, The Caucasus, North Caucasus
One of the militants who participated in the September 2004 Beslan school hostage crisis—Vladimir Khodov—was a resident of the North Ossetian village of Elkhotovo. He was an ethnic Russian who converted to Islam and later worked as a cook in the detachment of Chechen militants led by Ruslan Gelaev. Khodov moved to North Ossetia in his childhood in 1979, when his mother, a resident of the Ukrainian town of Berdyansk, married Anatoly Khodov, an Elkhotovo native and an Ossetian. Who Khodov’s real father was is unknown, but he was raised in an Ossetian village by an Ossetian stepfather. The village of Elkhotovo is predominantly Muslim. The local mosque was built in 1902. According to village residents, Anatoly Khodov was a former military man who was respected and whose family was relatively well-off.

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