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Frame from NTV Channel
Chechen Rebel Leader, Successor to Maskhadov Killed in Police Raid — Officials
Created: 17.06.2006 12:37 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 17:52 MSK
MosNews
Pro-Moscow officials in Russia’s restive Chechnya region said on Saturday their forces had killed a separatist cleric who had held the title of rebel leader for more than a year, the Reuters news agency reported.
“The so-called president of the Chechen republic of Ichkeria, Abdul-Khalim Saidulayev, was killed today in the course of a special operation,” Muslim Khuchiyev, a senior minister in Chechnya’s pro-Moscow government, told reporters.
Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov told reporters that Saidulayev was killed in Argun, 30 km east of the regional capital Grozny, after one of his aides sold information about his whereabouts to authorities. Kadyrov said the hunt for Saidulayev in Argun, in which pro-Moscow Chechen forces joined units of the FSB federal security service, was part of a wider search for rebel leaders currently under way across the region.
Russian news agencies quoted FSB head Nikolai Patrushev as confirming the killing of Saidulayev. Patrushev said one policemen and one FSB officer died during the operation.
A previously unknown Argun mullah, Saidulayev was named rebel leader in March 2005, replacing the charismatic Aslan Maskhadov when he was killed by Russian troops. Most analysts believe Saidulayev was a figurehead, installed as a compromise between two leading separatist warlords — Shamil Basayev and Doku Umarov.
“Saidulayev has never had any real influence on the situation in Chechnya,” Interfax news agency quoted pro-Moscow regional President Alu Alkhanov as saying. “People knew almost nothing about him.” Saidulayev said earlier this month that Umarov would succeed him. The Russians accuse both Umarov and Basayev of banditry and attacks on civilians.
Russia has fought two wars, in 1994-96 and in 1999, to subdue Chechnya’s drive for independence and take the restive southern province under its full control. Russian troops have crushed large-scale resistance by separatists, but rebel hit-and-run attacks and special operations by security forces claim dozens of lives every month.
Pro-Moscow Chechen leaders say the separatist resistance has died out and they face mainly criminal gangs, which mushroomed during the conflict. “Saidulayev’s death will have no real impact on the situation in the Chechen republic,” Alkhanov said. “The situation is stable and neither Saidulayev nor his successors will be able to stop positive changes in the region.”
No comment from the rebels was immediately available, the BBC said.
Only a day earlier, Ramzan Kadyrov, the son of Chechnya’s first pro-Moscow president, who was assassinated in 2004, said that he considers it his “sacred duty” to kill a top rebel warlord who earlier had offered a bounty for his head. Thus he responded to a statement from warlord Shamil Basayev which had been posted on a Web site sympathetic to rebels, the AP reported.
According to the Kavkaz Center Web, Basayev announced a $25,000 bounty for the killing of Ramzan Kadyrov and repeated his claim of responsibility for the bomb attack that killed his father, Akhmad Kadyrov, saying he paid $50,000 to those who carried out the assassination.
Kadyrov responded Friday, saying that he considers Basayev “not only the enemy of the Chechen people, but a personal enemy as well… I know now whom to bring to account for my father’s blood,” he said in a statement released to the media.
SEE ALSO
19.06.2006 10:26 MSK, MOSNEWS.COM
16.06.2006 18:20 MSK, MOSNEWS.COM
15.06.2006 09:26 MSK, MOSNEWS.COM
14.06.2006 16:14 MSK, MOSNEWS.COM
14.06.2006 14:11 MSK, MOSNEWS.COM
10.06.2006 14:31 MSK, MOSNEWS.COM
09.06.2006 11:43 MSK, MOSNEWS.COM
09.06.2006 11:11 MSK, MOSNEWS.COM
05.06.2006 10:45 MSK, MOSNEWS.COM
02.06.2006 16:39 MSK, MOSNEWS.COM
29.05.2006 12:55 MSK, MOSNEWS.COM
28.05.2006 14:06 MSK, MOSNEWS.COM
24.05.2006 09:50 MSK, MOSNEWS.COM
17.05.2006 18:42 MSK, MOSNEWS.COM
16.05.2006 15:23 MSK, MOSNEWS.COM
16.05.2006 11:09 MSK, MOSNEWS.COM
11.05.2006 11:38 MSK, MOSNEWS.COM
10.05.2006 16:53 MSK, MOSNEWS.COM
10.05.2006 12:50 MSK, MOSNEWS.COM
10.05.2006 11:00 MSK, MOSNEWS.COM
07.05.2006 13:41 MSK, MOSNEWS.COM
06.05.2006 14:06 MSK, MOSNEWS.COM
05.05.2006 17:30 MSK, MOSNEWS.COM
04.05.2006 17:50 MSK, MOSNEWS.COM
02.05.2006 14:07 MSK, MOSNEWS.COM
02.05.2006 11:37 MSK, MOSNEWS.COM
25.04.2006 11:58 MSK, MOSNEWS.COM
25.04.2006 11:33 MSK, MOSNEWS.COM
23.04.2006 22:24 MSK, MOSNEWS.COM
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