| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Dead Arab was Kuwaiti al-Qaeda member |
| 2005-05-18 |
| Russian authorities said today a Kuwaiti militant who was an al Qaida emissary to Chechnya has been killed by security forces in a neighbouring region, the second statement in as many days linking foreigners to Chechen rebels. The alleged militant, who went by the single name Jarah, was killed on Tuesday evening along with another suspect during an operation near the Chechen border in Dagestan, said Major General Ilya Shabalkin, the spokesman for the Russian campaign against rebels in Chechnya and surrounding areas. In a statement, Shabalkin said Jarah was an al Qaida emissary in Chechnya and has close connections with members of the Muslim Brotherhood, an outlawed Egyptian Islamic movement, and of Al-Haramain, a Saudi Charity that the kingdom's government dissolved last year amid US suspicion that it was bankrolling al Qaida. He said Jarah had been a middleman for the funding of Chechen rebels by foreign terror groups and had helped top rebel leaders — Shamil Basayev and Aslan Maskhadov, who was killed earlier this year — to organise "many large terrorist acts." He did not name any specific attacks Jarah allegedly helped plan. Russia authorities say Chechen rebels, fighting their second separatist war in a decade, have been financed by Islamic terrorist groups abroad and that many Arab mercenaries have fought alongside the rebels in the mountainous southern region, in some cases leading groups of militants. According to Shabalkin, whose claims could not be independently confirmed, Jarah received training in Taliban terror camps and was adept at preparing bombs and poisons. He said that Jarah had spent "a long period of time" in the Pankisi Gorge, a region near Chechnya in neighbouring Georgia, and in Azerbaijan. While in Georgia and Azerbaijan, he said the Kuwaiti citizen and unidentified associates received large amounts of money from "foreign terrorist centres" and sent it along to Russia's North Caucasus region, which includes Chechnya. Jarah also frequently entered Chechnya, where he moved with rebel groups under Basayev and took part in terror and other attacks, trained militants in explosives and taught them extremist Muslim ideology, Shabalkin said. He was also involved in training female suicide bombers, Shabalkin's statement said. On Tuesday, Shabalkin had announced Russian security forces killed a prominent Chechen rebel he accused of planning chemical attacks. He said the rebel was supposed to carry out the attacks under orders from a Jordanian militant, Abu Mudjaid, who allegedly organised a shipment of toxic substances to Chechnya from abroad. Authorities in Chechnya say many attacks there have been carried out by militants entering from Dagestan, the restive region where Shabalkin said Jarah was killed. Russian and regional officials met today to discuss plans to base a Russian military unit in Dagestan's Botlikh district, an area near the Chechen border where rebels seized villages in 1999 fighting that was one of the catalysts for the Kremlin's decision to send troops into Chechnya that year, starting the second war. |
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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Russians seize anti-aircraft missile system from 3 dead Chechens |
| 2005-04-11 |
| The Russian military says it killed three Chechen fighters and seized an antiaircraft missile system from the site of the clash. Major General Ilya Shabalkin said two Chechen fighters were killed during the brief skirmish on 9 April, one was killed while helicopters were tracking him after he fled, and a fourth fighter escaped. Shabalkin said today that the Russian forces found a large amount of ammunition and weaponry at the clash site in the eastern Nozhai-Yurt district along with the missile system. Chechen rebels have used portable shoulder-fired missiles to shoot down military helicopters over Chechnya, including one crash that left more than 120 passengers and crew dead in 2002. |
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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Basayev aide killed near Grozny |
| 2005-04-10 |
| Russian federal forces killed a wanted associate of Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev near Grozny during an operation Friday as the republic intensified its crackdown on rebels. "Russian federal forces have killed a guerilla who planned terrorist attacks against five heads of Chechen district administrations," the spokesman for the federal forces in the North Caucasus, Major General Ilya Shabalkin, was quoted by Interfax as saying. Adam Tepsukayev, 27, a native of Argun city, who was on the government's wanted list, traded fire with the federal forces before he was shot dead during the operation, Shabalkin said. Tepsukayev had been operating under Arab mercenary Abu al-Valid since 2002 but after al-Valid's death he became an aide to Basayev and led an armed gang which was blamed for a series of terrorist attacks against civilians and police in Argun, according to officers of the regional headquarters for the counter-terrorist operation in the North Caucasus, the Itar-Tass reported. Tepsukayev participated in an armed attack on the administration building of the Oktyabrsky district of Grozny on Aug. 21 last year, which killed a dozen civilians and police, the officers said. Tepsukayev was also said to have participated in several killings of officers of the Chechen Interior Ministry. |
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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| More on Maskhadov's successor |
| 2005-03-11 |
| Little-known Chechen cleric Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev will take over as interim rebel leader after Aslan Maskhadov's death earlier this week, rebel envoy Akhmed Zakayev said Thursday. Analysts said, however, that the announcement was probably an attempt by radical warlord Shamil Basayev to buy time as he figures out his next move. The Federal Security Service announced Tuesday that Maskhadov had been killed that day in a bunker during an FSB sweep in Tolstoy-Yurt, a village near Grozny. Zakayev, who served as Maskhadov's representative and lives in Basayev backed Sadulayev's candidacy in a statement posted Wednesday on another rebel web site, Kavkaz Center. Andrei Malashenko, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center, said there was simply no one to replace Maskhadov and his political experience, and that Sadulayev's rise to power was a stop-gap measure aimed at giving Basayev time to think. "This move is essentially necessary for Basayev," Malashenko said. "It is a pause that will buy him time to figure out what he is going to do and how he is going to act. He is fully aware that he can hardly move from the battlefield to politics because no one will talk to him -- not America, not Europe, no one." Malashenko said Sadulayev is a "colorless personality" who would not be around very long. "He may have some influence as a religious leader, but to think that he has any political clout or that anyone would line up to vote for him is simply delusional," he said. Maskhadov's son Anzor, who lives in Baku, said Sadulayev was a worthy successor to his father, Interfax reported. But Ruslan Yamadayev, a former rebel who is now a State Duma deputy, suggested that Sadulayev did not exist. "This is some kind of bluff. I think there is no such person on Earth," Yamadayev said on Ekho Moskvy radio. In a statement on the Kavkaz Center web site, Maskhadov's family appealed to world leaders to use their authority to help secure the return of Maskhadov's body. They accused Moscow of "trampling on universal human standards" and treating Maskhadov's body in a "savage, barbaric manner," according to the statement attributed to his widow, Kusama, his daughter Fatima and Anzor Maskhadov. "Because of this, more pain has been added to our loss," the statement said. "This is blasphemous and completely inexplicable in a modern, civilized world." Deputy General Prosecutor Nikolai Shepel said Wednesday that the body is expected to be buried at an undisclosed location -- in line with a federal law on terrorism. Maskhadov was charged with terrorism last year for allegedly ordering the Beslan school attack and charged in 2000 with carrying out an armed revolt in Chechnya. Lawyer Igor Trunov, who represented the victims of the Dubrovka theater hostage crisis and apartment bombings in Volgodonsk and Moscow, said that according to the law, Maskhadov's body should not be given to his family because he was killed in an anti-terrorist operation. He said, however, that the law violates the Constitution because it allows authorities to declare anyone killed in such operations guilty of terrorism. "Even if they were completely innocent, the family can't recover the body," Trunov said by telephone. "It's a clear violation of rights." Maskhadov's body has been taken out of Chechnya for an autopsy, after which it will be buried, Shepel said Thursday. The autopsy is expected to last at least two weeks, he said. Details remained sketchy as to exactly how Maskhadov was killed. Major General Ilya Shabalkin, spokesman for the federal forces in Chechnya, said by telephone that the preliminary version is that Maskhadov died in an explosion after FSB commandos tried to blast their way into the bunker where he was hiding. Citing the ongoing autopsy, Shabalkin declined to comment on a statement attributed to him in The New York Times on Wednesday that Maskhadov was shell-shocked after the blast and was killed by commandos in an ensuing gun battle. Pictures of Maskhadov's body released by the FSB show what appeared to be a small bullet wound under his left eye. Kommersant, citing forensics experts, said the images indicate that Maskhadov may have been shot in the back of the head and that the injury under his eye was the exit wound. Ivan Buromsky, a professor at the Russian State Medical University's forensic medicine department, said exit wounds tend to be larger than entrance wounds. "But there are a lot of factors involved, including distance and the weapon used," Buromsky said by telephone. "In fact, sometimes exit and entrance wounds can look very similar." Buromsky also said that blood that appeared to have trickled out of Maskhadov's left ear in the FSB images gives little insight into how he died. "Any time there is an internal head injury -- be it from a blast, a gunshot or a blunt object -- blood is going flow out of the ears," he said. Moscow-backed Chechen First Deputy Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov backed off from his initial remarks that Maskhadov had been accidentally shot by a bodyguard. "I was just joking, you know, that a bodyguard's gun accidentally went off," Kadyrov told Interfax. "In reality, they threw a grenade in there, and Maskhadov died from that." Kadyrov also denied a web site report that his security forces had killed Maskhadov on Sunday and that he had asked federal forces to take credit. In Moscow, the Foreign Ministry angrily lashed out at Poland for criticizing Maskhadov's death. Polish Foreign Minister Adam Rotfeld called the killing "a crime" and "a political mistake because ... Maskhadov was the only partner with whom an agreement could be sought." The Foreign Ministry said Poland does not understand the situation in Chechnya and the war against terrorism. |
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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Hard boyz claim Arsanov being tortured |
| 2005-02-14 |
| Former Chechen rebel Vice President Vakha Arsanov was detained in Grozny last month, a Chechen rebel web site and Interfax confirmed Friday. The web site said he was being tortured in an unofficial prison run by Deputy Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov's security forces. Kommersant, citing a senior FSB official in Chechnya, reported on Jan. 17 that Arsanov had been detained by Chechen OMON commandos. But the Chechen Interior Ministry, to which the OMON reports, denied any knowledge of it at the time, and the ministry's chief of staff described the newspaper report as "conjecture." Rebel web site Kavkaz Center said Friday that Arsanov was detained in mid-January and transferred to the prison in the Kadyrov clan's home village of Tsentoroi. The web site said Arsanov is being tortured and being told to publicly denounce former rebel President Aslan Maskhadov and admit "the wrongness of the course of the Chechen people toward an independent state." Last week, Maskhadov called on Moscow to begin peace talks with the rebels. Kavkaz Center said Arsanov's elder son went to Chechnya from Baku, Azerbaijan, in an attempt to assist his father and was also detained by Kadyrov's security force. Interfax, citing "well-informed" Chechen law enforcement sources, said Arsanov was detained and that no arrest warrant had been issued for him beforehand. Chechnya's chief prosecutor, Vladimir Kravchenko, said his office was looking into the reports about the detention, Interfax reported. A spokesman for the federal troops in Chechnya, Major General Ilya Shabalkin, said he had no knowledge of the matter, while Chechen Interior Minister Ruslan Alkhanov and Chechen Security Council head Rudnik Dudayev declined to comment, Interfax reported. Human rights groups said in late January that eight of Maskhadov's relatives who disappeared earlier in the month were being held at the Tsentoroi prison. In October, Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov suggested detaining terrorists' relatives as a way to prevent attacks in the wake of the Beslan tragedy. Kadyrov said Sunday that he would consider suing human rights groups that accuse him of abductions, Itar-Tass reported. Arsanov, who was elected vice president on the same ticket as Maskhadov in 1997, has reportedly been providing political support and protection to Chechnya-based religious extremists, who are widely believed to have undermined Maskhadov's authority in the waning days of the republic's de facto independence in the late 1990s. Maskhadov fired Arsanov as vice president in January 2001 for refusing to fight federal troops when the second Chechnya campaign started in 1999, Kommersant said. |
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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia | |||
| Russians risk reprisals for killing a rebel chief | |||
| 2004-10-26 | |||
Magomed Khashiyev has died again, this time for real.
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| Caucasus | |
| 3 hard boyz call it quits | |
| 2004-08-27 | |
Over the last 24 hours, three members of illegal armed groups in Chechnya have laid down their arms. "Two active members of underground gangs turned themselves in to law enforcement agencies in the Vedeno district," federal forces spokesman Major General Ilya Shabalkin told Interfax on Thursday. The rebels said the gang's leader made them attack local police patrols and take part in bandit attacks against citizens of the Vedeno district while wearing military camouflage uniform and masks, Shabalkin said. Another member of an illegal armed group turned himself in to the authorities in the Achkhoi-Martan region of Chechnya, Shabalkin said. The rebel gave up his Kalashnikov rifle and ammunition, as well, he said.
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