MOSCOW, June 14 (RAPSI) – The mayor of the capital of Russia’s Dagestan region, who faces accusations of having ordered the murder of an investigator, denied reports on Friday that he had tried to commit suicide.

“I did not attempt [to commit suicide] and never will,” Said Amirov, who had served as mayor of Makhachkala since 1998, told journalists at the Basmanny District Court in Moscow, which that day ruled to suspend him from his post.

A police spokeswoman had earlier told RIA Novosti that Amirov was taken to a prison hospital following a suicide attempt. The Izvestia newspaper, citing a source in the Federal Penitentiary Service, reported that a guard had found the 59-year-old with “deep cuts on his right arm, left wrist and both shins,” but that “it was hard to establish whether Amirov actually planned to take his own life.”

Amirov’s lawyer, Mark Kruter, confirmed that his client, who suffers from diabetes and hepatitis C and is confined to a wheelchair, had been transferred from Moscow’s Lefortovo pretrial detention center to a hospital at the Butyrka prison. He said Amirov would have “more comfortable conditions” at the hospital, but he did not confirm or deny the reported suicide attempt.

Amirov was arrested on June 1 and transported to Moscow, where he was taken into custody on suspicion of having ordered the murder of investigator Arsen Gadzhibekov in the Dagestan city of Kaspiysk. Amirov has denounced the case as politically motivated.

On June 4, charges were officially brought against him. The investigators believe that Amirov ordered the assassination, which was organized by Magomed Abdulgalimov, assistant city prosecutor of Kizlyar with accomplices.

The authorities have arrested 11 people in connection with this case and do not rule out that more suspects may have been involved.

A long-term member of the ruling United Russia party, Amirov won the title of the country’s best mayor in late April, according to his administration’s website.