Mafia Boss Gunned Down In Moscow

MAFIA BOSS GUNNED DOWN IN MOSCOW
Vitaliy Belousov

RIA Novosti

MOSCOW, January 16 (RIA Novosti) – A reputed top criminal kingpin
was killed in a contract hit in Moscow on Wednesday, police said.

Aslan Usoyan, also known as Granddad Khassan, was fatally wounded by
a sniper in central Moscow and died in hospital soon afterward.

The sniper fired a total of six shots from a nearby building as
Usoyan, 75, walked out of a restaurant. Only one bullet hit him
while two others seriously injured a woman passerby, who was put into
intensive care.

The assailant escaped.

Granddad Khassan survived at least two previous attempts on his life,
one in 1998 and the other in 2010.

Police have linked the attack to an ongoing turf war.

Usoyan, “in the business” since the 1960s, has worked his way up in
the Soviet and post-Soviet underworld.

He controlled a large number of organized crime groups in the
Caucasus, the Urals region and central Russia, especially in Moscow
and St. Petersburg, as well as abroad. He has engaged in gambling, drug
trafficking, illegal arms sales and extraction of mineral resources.