Because poetry is “un-Islamic.”

(Rostov-on-Don, June 6, Interfax) – Eleven people have been detained on suspicion of murdering North Ossetian poet Shamil Jigkayev, Interfax was told at the Main Investigative Department for the Southern Federal District.

“Arms, drugs and extremist literature were discovered among their belongings. Investigators are now working with the detainees,” a spokesman said.

“No charges have been brought yet,” he said.

He denied media reports that 14 parishioners of the Sunni mosque of Vladikavkaz had been charged in relation to the case.

Jigkayev, a public figure and dean of the department of Ossetian philology of the North Ossetian State University, was killed in the outskirts of Vladikavkaz on May 26. The revenge of Muslim extremists for the publication of a poem in a local magazine is regarded as the main theory behind the crime.