An airport immigration dispute turned deadly in Moldova. This is tragic, and also probably a reminder for airport officials to secure their guns?
In this post:
Passenger opens fire at Chisinau Airport, kills two
An airport border police officer and airport security guard were fatally shot at Chisinau International Airport (KIV) on Friday, following an immigration dispute. According to the Moldovan Interior Ministry, a 43-year-old man who is a citizen of Tajikistan was detained at the airport, when he was denied entry after landing on a flight from Istanbul.
While being taken to a special area of the airport (presumably where he would wait prior to being deported), he managed to seize a gun from an airport border police officer, which he used to kill two people. This caused quite a bit of gunfire in the terminal, eventually leading to the passenger being shot as well. However, he was “only” wounded, and is receiving medical care.
During this incident, passengers were evacuated from the airport, and the airport was also shut down.
This is tragic and puzzling
First of all, my thoughts are with the two people who lost their lives in this violent act. You usually think of an airport as being a pretty safe place to be, though obviously that’s not always the case.
One has to wonder what exactly the passenger was thinking. Does he just have some anger issues, or did he think that opening fire would lead to the best outcome? If so, what did he picture that outcome being?
All that being said, the real question is what kind of lax practices Moldovan airport officials use with their guns? Presumably guns weren’t properly secured, or else this wouldn’t have happened. Was there a gun just sitting on a table somewhere, or how was this passenger able to get his hands on a deadly weapon? Very strange…
Bottom line
On Friday, a passenger from Tajikistan arriving in Moldova was denied entry. He wasn’t too happy about this, so while being escorted to a holding room, he got his hands on a gun and started shooting. Unfortunately two people were killed, including an airport immigration officer and airport security guard. What an awful and (presumably) preventable situation.
What do you make of this Chisinau Airport tragedy?
Wagner fighters also likely trained in weapons capture and retention. I’d guess the border guard had his weapon in holster and the Wagner guy got a hold of it. This is why a lot of American LEO’s lock up their weapons before processing an arrestee or entering an interrogation room.
It is scary. Thinking about immigration, how people sometime even get handcuffed before being deported. I always thought they are overdoing it, but now it gets a different meaning. When I arrived in Madrid for a transit from TLV on Iberia there was a passenger that was wanted by the Spanish police the crew asked the passenger to come he refused. The police asked to inspect passports personally. I almost missed the connection to Chicago...
It is scary. Thinking about immigration, how people sometime even get handcuffed before being deported. I always thought they are overdoing it, but now it gets a different meaning. When I arrived in Madrid for a transit from TLV on Iberia there was a passenger that was wanted by the Spanish police the crew asked the passenger to come he refused. The police asked to inspect passports personally. I almost missed the connection to Chicago beause of this delay. I was irritated at that time. But now I am thinking how well it was handled. Sorry for the loss of life. But I am pretty sure the Spanish police intervened and tried to arraign the passenger only after all the passengers were off the plane.
Having been to Chișinău airport, I'm not surprised.
Since Russia has incited an area in Eastern Moldova to be a 'breakaway republic' from Moldova, known as Transnistria (like he did in Ukraine's Donbas area stirring up trouble from the inside) I would venture a guess that his citizenship might be Russian. That he was just flying from Tajikistan. Moldova might be have closed its borders to Russian citizens like many countries have and that was why he was being denied entry.
Or...
Since Russia has incited an area in Eastern Moldova to be a 'breakaway republic' from Moldova, known as Transnistria (like he did in Ukraine's Donbas area stirring up trouble from the inside) I would venture a guess that his citizenship might be Russian. That he was just flying from Tajikistan. Moldova might be have closed its borders to Russian citizens like many countries have and that was why he was being denied entry.
Or citizenship could not be the issue, maybe the PMC guy was a former prisoner convicted of a felony and Moldova has a law about accepting felons.
I'm sure more details will come to light. Just food for thought, theories, here of course.
You realize of course the "How and Why"s of that (not so) "stupid" law:
I have not been in Eastern Europe these last 10 years, but it used to be that, all over the (ex?) communist world, all the local hardware (phones, tablets, laptops, desktops etc) were equipped with spying programs, installed either by the local distributors or through malware. The authorities do not want or trust the visitors' untampered devices which, God forbid, might...
You realize of course the "How and Why"s of that (not so) "stupid" law:
I have not been in Eastern Europe these last 10 years, but it used to be that, all over the (ex?) communist world, all the local hardware (phones, tablets, laptops, desktops etc) were equipped with spying programs, installed either by the local distributors or through malware. The authorities do not want or trust the visitors' untampered devices which, God forbid, might be brought in and left on purpose in local hands. For the same reason, VPNs are (were?) absolutely prohibited.
The Chinese have perfected the process by drowning into the small print of visa forms a reconnaissance that visitors' phones and computers will be inspected at the country's ports of entry and may be impounded. It then becomes easy for them to spy on those visitors.
Also, the rate of "loss" when you want to recuperate the device you have left behind is staggering. Even when you get it back, there is no guarantee that spying malware won't have been installed or that all your hard disk won't have been been copied. Even when this is not the case, your device makes excellent material for black market resale as they are usually far more advanced than what is available locally.
So you see, the law may be dictatorial but it is not stupid. If you make enough noise about it, they relent because they do not want to attract attention over that matter.
While I feel sorry for the victims, my experience flying into Chisinau earlier this year can be described as horrible at best.
I would skip the border control part, as I believe that may be a personal experience unlikely encountered by most of the readers here. However, it is 2023 and the country still requires people to bring no more than 2 cell phones and 1 computer (which includes laptop, computer, and tablet) into the...
While I feel sorry for the victims, my experience flying into Chisinau earlier this year can be described as horrible at best.
I would skip the border control part, as I believe that may be a personal experience unlikely encountered by most of the readers here. However, it is 2023 and the country still requires people to bring no more than 2 cell phones and 1 computer (which includes laptop, computer, and tablet) into the country.
I brought my laptop and my tablet, and they insisted on confiscating one of those because of that backward law they still have. After communicating with them for like 15 minutes (most of them didn't speak English or spoke broken English) in vain, I was outraged (exacerbated by my exhausting border control experience) and literally told them that "If I knew there were shitty laws like this before I booked my flight, I would never consider visiting your country, and thank you for letting me know that Moldova is the country to stay away from", which seemed to catch them off guard and, after a few more seconds of discussion, they eventually let me go and told me that this was an "exception out of their kindness". Lol.
With that being said, Moldova is a nice country, with good food and wine at a cheap price, though there was not much to see there. Half of the passengers on my flight seemed to be Ukrainians returning home, as the Ukrainian airspace was still closed and Chisinau was about 3-4 hrs of bus away from Odesa.
Yeah, what you experienced is definitely worse than being shot and killed.
While that IS a dumb rule/law, it's THEIR country, and they can have those laws if they want to. It's your responsibility to know what the laws are where you're going.
Is he a Russian citizen or is he a citizen of Tajikistan? Sad state of "news" these days when everyone is rushing to be fast and no one cares about actually being factually correct.
I guess No Visa on arrival for him in the Future?
Dude was a Wagner fighter, as stated in one of the tweets you linked. Do you really think someone linked to Wagner is gonna feel safe in Russia right now? Come on.
So he's used to killing innocent people
One of the linked tweets said the man was a Wagner fighter. If this is true, he may have thought that staying in Russian controlled territory was a threat to his own life.