A godfather’s grave
UNIFORMED police were notably absent this week when a few hundred tough-looking, leather-clad men arrived in black Land Cruisers and Mercedes to pay their last respects to a man reputed to be Russia’s mafia boss. Journalists and photographers were told to stay out of the cemetery—for their own sake.The 75-year-old Aslan Usoyan, known as Ded (Grandad) Khasan, was shot dead by a sniper on January 16th as he walked out of a central Moscow restaurant where he often received visitors. He was Russia’s most important “thief-in-law”, a term coined in the Gulag for a criminal bound by a code of honour. “To the Great Patriarch of the thieves’ world, the legendary Grandpa Khasan”, read a banner on one wreath of white roses.He was buried beyond the city limits. The funeral was arranged hurriedly and lacked the pomp usually reserved by the Russian criminal world for its leaders. A plan to bury Mr Usoyan in his native Georgia was aborted when Georgian officials said they did not want him. Clearing the country of mafia bosses has been a main achievement of Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s president. Yet in Moscow Mr Usoyan had…
