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Aslan Usoyan Dead: Russian Mafia Boss Known As 'Grandpa Khasan' Killed
In Moscow
Huffington Post
01/16/13
By MANSUR MIROVALEV
MOSCOW -- One of Russia's top crime lords was gunned down Wednesday in
Moscow in what police described as a war between two powerful mobs
over lucrative construction projects, allegedly including ones for the
2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
Police said an unidentified gunman fired seven shots from a sniper gun
at Aslan Usoyan near a restaurant in central Moscow - the third
assassination attempt on him since the late 1990s.
Usoyan, also known as Grandpa Khasan, was a 75-year-old ethnic Kurd
born in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Police say for the past
two decades he headed one of the region's most powerful criminal
groups, which trafficked in drugs and weapons and controlled
underground casinos as well as many legal businesses, including those
in the construction industry.
Police said Usoyan was hit in the jaw, hospitalized in a coma and then
died. Police said the gunman, who used a state-of-the-art automatic
rifle issued to Russian special forces, also injured a passerby, who
was hospitalized.
Usoyan came from a caste of professional criminals who sport elaborate
tattoos, follow unwritten prison laws codified in Stalinist-era Gulags
and have been romanticized in countless popular songs.
He was first convicted in 1956 in Georgia and soon became a
professional criminal. Like other members of his caste, he was
strictly forbidden from befriending men in uniform, avoided luxurious
lifestyles, never got married and considered prison his only true
home.
Having survived the totalitarian system that spawned them, Russian
criminals enjoyed a heyday in the decade after the 1991 fall of the
Soviet Union. Usoyan opened a chain of casinos in Moscow and became
the keeper of an emergency fund for jailed Russian criminals - a
position that gave him immense authority in the criminal underworld of
the vast former Soviet Union.
By the early 2000s, he had consolidated control over criminal groups
in southern Russia that united natives of Georgia, Armenia and
Azerbaijan as well as ethnic Russians. He feuded with mobsters who
became more like Italian mafia and often disregarded Soviet-era prison
norms.
Since 2006, Usoyan had been at war with a criminal group headed by
another Georgian, Tariel Oniani, according to organized crime experts.
PHOTO CAPTION: Russian media said the battle between the two clans had
intensified in recent years as they vied for control over construction
projects in southern Russia, including the huge sports facilities
being built for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
In Moscow
Huffington Post
01/16/13
By MANSUR MIROVALEV
MOSCOW -- One of Russia's top crime lords was gunned down Wednesday in
Moscow in what police described as a war between two powerful mobs
over lucrative construction projects, allegedly including ones for the
2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
Police said an unidentified gunman fired seven shots from a sniper gun
at Aslan Usoyan near a restaurant in central Moscow - the third
assassination attempt on him since the late 1990s.
Usoyan, also known as Grandpa Khasan, was a 75-year-old ethnic Kurd
born in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Police say for the past
two decades he headed one of the region's most powerful criminal
groups, which trafficked in drugs and weapons and controlled
underground casinos as well as many legal businesses, including those
in the construction industry.
Police said Usoyan was hit in the jaw, hospitalized in a coma and then
died. Police said the gunman, who used a state-of-the-art automatic
rifle issued to Russian special forces, also injured a passerby, who
was hospitalized.
Usoyan came from a caste of professional criminals who sport elaborate
tattoos, follow unwritten prison laws codified in Stalinist-era Gulags
and have been romanticized in countless popular songs.
He was first convicted in 1956 in Georgia and soon became a
professional criminal. Like other members of his caste, he was
strictly forbidden from befriending men in uniform, avoided luxurious
lifestyles, never got married and considered prison his only true
home.
Having survived the totalitarian system that spawned them, Russian
criminals enjoyed a heyday in the decade after the 1991 fall of the
Soviet Union. Usoyan opened a chain of casinos in Moscow and became
the keeper of an emergency fund for jailed Russian criminals - a
position that gave him immense authority in the criminal underworld of
the vast former Soviet Union.
By the early 2000s, he had consolidated control over criminal groups
in southern Russia that united natives of Georgia, Armenia and
Azerbaijan as well as ethnic Russians. He feuded with mobsters who
became more like Italian mafia and often disregarded Soviet-era prison
norms.
Since 2006, Usoyan had been at war with a criminal group headed by
another Georgian, Tariel Oniani, according to organized crime experts.
PHOTO CAPTION: Russian media said the battle between the two clans had
intensified in recent years as they vied for control over construction
projects in southern Russia, including the huge sports facilities
being built for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.