Chechen rebel leader killed
MOSCOW – Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, who masterminded the Beslan school siege and numerous other terrorist attacks in Russia in a campaign to drive Moscow’s troops out of Muslim-majority Chechnya, was killed by an explosion in southern Russia early Monday, officials here reported.
The death of Russia’s most wanted man is an important milestone for the Kremlin and its Chechen allies in their battle against an increasingly decimated separatist movement. The guerrillas have fought two full-scale wars with an often brutal Russian army in the past 11 years and recently have sought to spread instability and violence across other republics of the northern Caucasus region.
“This is a just retribution for the bandits,” President Vladimir Putin said in televised remarks. “For our children in Beslan … and for all the terrorist acts carried out in Moscow and other regions of Russia.” But he warned Russians not to expect an end to the violence.
In the Beslan school siege, 331 people died, most of them children. Basayev also organized the 2002 Moscow theater siege in which Russian knock-out gas killed 129 hostages, and the seizure of a hospital in the southern city of Budyonnovsk in 1995 in which more than 100 people were killed.
“The death of Basayev is a symbolic act for the Russian state because he was the cruelest of enemies,” said Sergey Markedonov, a specialist on Chechnya at the Institute for Political and Military Analysis in Moscow. “But Chechen separatism is only one part of the challenge to Russia now. Islamic extremism is spreading and Basayev’s liquidation is not the end of terrorism.”
The bearded Basayev, frequently photographed in military cap and camouflage uniform, emerged as top commander in what began as a largely secular rebellion against Russian power but in recent years has moved toward radical Islam. The Russian army countered with often savage tactics, shelling villages and killing and imprisoning thousands of civilians.
“Responsibility is with the whole Russian nation, which with silent approval gives a yes,” said Basayev, justifying the Beslan siege in an interview aired on ABC television last year. “Well, you can ask why I did it. To stop the killing of thousands and thousands more of Chechen children, Chechen women and the elderly. Look at the facts. They are being kidnapped, taken away, murdered.”
On Monday, Russian television showed the devastated wreckage of a truck, reportedly packed with 220 pounds of dynamite, that blew up, killing Basayev and 12 other fighters. But details about how the explosion occurred and whether it was triggered by Russian forces or mishandling by the insurgents remains unclear.
Before Basayev was identified as being among the dead, Russian media reported that a group of militants were killed when the truck they were loading blew up at around midnight near the village of Ekazhevo in the southern Russian republic of Ingushetia. The force of the explosion shredded the truck and three cars accompanying it. Basayev was in one of the cars beside the truck, according to Ingush Deputy Prime Minister Bashir Aushev.
Later, after Basayev was identified, Federal Security Service chief Nikolai Patrushev said that Basayev was killed in a “sweep operation” in Ingushetia, which borders Chechnya and has been the scene of increasing violence over the past two years.
Patrushev, speaking to Putin in his Kremlin office Monday as television cameras rolled, said that “the effort became possible thanks to our operative actions abroad in the first place in the countries where weapons are gathered for Chechnya.”
Basayev and the other fighters were plotting “a terrorist attack in Ingushetia in an attempt to put pressure on the leadership of Russia during the period when the G8 summit is due to take place,” said Patrushev, referring to a meeting of leaders of the Group of Eight industrial countries that begins in St. Petersburg this weekend.
Putin, who had been repeatedly taunted by the fact that Basayev and his men could move around the region with impunity, expressed stone-faced satisfaction at the news. “I congratulate you,” he told his security chief.
The pro-Kremlin prime minister of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, was elated. Speaking to Russian television, he said, “I promised to kill him. I regret not having being able to do it myself.”
A Web site, Kavkaz-Center, that has been a forum for Basayev in the past said only that “the Chechen command is not yet making any commentaries or declarations.”
The killing of Basayev follows the elimination of a series of Chechen insurgent leaders over the past 15 months.