Authorities in Daghestan are investigating the murder of 34-year-old Dinara Alkhasova, who went missing in Makhachkala on Friday. According to investigators, the woman’s former husband organised the attack out of jealousy over her new marriage. Human rights organisations have raised alarm about the levels of domestic violence and femicide in the North Caucasus on multiple occasions. As reported by the head of the Daghestani Interior Ministry’s press service Gayana Garieva, Alkhasova took her four-year-old son to nursery on Friday morning before telling her relatives that she was going to work. She soon stopped responding to calls, and her phone was switched off. Alkhasova’s mother contacted the police, and the woman was reported missing. Garieva said that officers had been investigating the missing woman’s circle from the first day, including her ex-husband and current spouse as well as friends and acquaintances. They also examined CCTV footage and reconstructed her route. The footage showed a car closely following Alkhasova’s vehicle, appearing alongside it at several points along the route. It later emerged that the car belonged to an acquaintance of Alkhasova’s ex-husband, who has been identified only by his first name, Akif. He had offered to help his friend’s wife repair the vehicle and subsequently used it to avoid drawing attention to his own car. According to the head of the Daghestani Interior Ministry’s press service, Akif knew that Alkhasova only accepted bookings from women so therefore enlisted his friend’s wife to pose as a tourist and booked a trip to the Sulak Canyon, after which Alkhasova accepted the booking. When the woman arrived at the designated location, her former husband and his friend were there alongside the purported customer. In a video of his confession, shared by Garieva, the former husband says that he attacked her with a knife. ‘While aiding his friend with transport, the suspect would often appeal to male solidarity, often saying that his ex-wife “was tarnishing his honour and that it was difficult for him to cope emotionally” ’, Garieva wrote . After the murder, he and his friend purportedly moved the body to another car. The friend, an Azerbaijani citizen who, according to Garieva, had been living illegally in Russia for several years, took the body to a relative’s plot of land on the outskirts of Novy Khushet, near Makhachkala. There, he asked a local tractor driver to dig a hole, claiming to him that it was for an outdoor toilet, according to law enforcement. After the tractor driver left, the man placed the body in the hole and covered it with earth. He then called the same tractor operator back, claiming that he had made a mistake about the location, and asked him to fill in the first hole and dig another one nearby. The tractor driver complied, unaware that he was helping conceal a crime. The suspects also attempted to obstruct the search for Alkhasova, which began several hours after she disappeared. According to the Interior Ministry, her former husband handed her phone to an acquaintance who worked as a taxi driver, asking him to switch it on in Kizilyurt, around 70 kilometres from Makhachkala, and then throw it into a ditch. Alkhasova’s car was also concealed after her murder: its registration plates were replaced, and it was left in an inconspicuous car park among other vehicles. On the first day of the search, police officers trying to trace the missing woman called her former husband, who subsequently came to the police station for questioning. He was released because there was no evidence linking him to the murder at that point. The following day, officers wanted to speak to him again, but he said he could not come because of abdominal pain. He called an ambulance, was hospitalised with suspected acute appendicitis and underwent surgery. However, CCTV footage enabled the police to identify those involved in the crime. On Monday, Alkhasova’s body was found on the outskirts of Novy Khushet. The same day, officers detained her former husband and his 43-year-old acquaintance. Another suspected participant in the crime, the 38-year-old woman, the wife of Baga, who allegedly booked the taxi to lure Alkhasova into the trap, was detained at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport. On Monday evening, the Daghestani Interior Ministry released a video of the former husband’s confession. According to law enforcement officials, jealousy was the motive for the murder: he had not accepted that Alkhasova had remarried several months earlier and did not want her new husband to raise their four-year-old son.