Thu Feb 19, 5:29 PM ET
DOHA, Qatar - Qatar said Thursday it has arrested two suspects in the assassination of former Chechen President Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev.
Yandarbiyev, 51, was killed Feb. 13 when a bomb ripped through his car. His teenage son was wounded.
The Interior Ministry said two suspects are being questioned in his death. No further details were available in the ministry statement, carried by the Gulf state's national news agency, QNA.
Yandarbiyev, Chechnya's acting president in 1996-1997, had lived in Qatar since 2000 and was wanted by Russian authorities for suspected terrorism and links to al-Qaida. Moscow had been seeking his extradition.
His assassination occurred one week after a bombing in a Moscow subway killed 41 people and wounded more than 100. President Vladimir Putin blamed Chechen rebels for the bombing.
An aide to Yandarbiyev, Ibrahim Gabi, has blamed the Kremlin for Yandarbiyev's killing, a pro-rebel Web site reported.
Last year, the United Nations put Yandarbiyev on a list of people with alleged links to al-Qaida. Washington also put him on a list of international terrorists subject to financial sanctions.
Yandarbiyev became one of the most prominent proponents of radical Islam among the Chechen rebels. During the hard-line Islamic rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Yandarbiyev opened a Chechen Embassy in the Afghan capital, and a consulate in the southern city of Kandahar.
Qatar hosts a variety of Muslim politicians and militants, including Palestinian Hamas leaders, Algerian Muslim fundamentalists and officials of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s regime. The Qataris say they are adhering to Arab traditions of providing hospitality to guests and of offering sanctuary to refugees.
The practice also serves to defuse anger at Qatar for allowing the United States to establish military bases in the Gulf sheikdom.
Thu Feb 19, 6:13 PM ET
BEIRUT, Lebanon - Lebanon will return to Baghdad more than $15 million in Iraqi money seized on a plane that landed in Beirut, Lebanon's top legal official said Thursday.
Lebanese authorities confiscated 19.5 billion new Iraqi dinars from a private, Lebanese-owned plane that flew from Baghdad on Jan. 14.
They also arrested two Lebanese businessmen on the plane and a third who met them at the airport. All have been released on bail.
Lebanon's Prosecutor General Adnan Addoum said he decided to return the money after the Iraqi Foreign Ministry had sent a letter Feb. 14 demanding the dinars.
The confiscation of the new money came as Iraq's old bank notes — bearing former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's portrait — became obsolete following a three-month period to exchange them for the new currency.
One of the arrested businessmen reportedly told police that most of the money was to pay for armored cars to protect Iraqi officials.
The Iraqi Interior Ministry said in a letter published in Beirut last month that the money was intended to pay for Iraqi government purchases.
Iraqi Governing Council members have visited Beirut and asked Lebanese officials to release the money, plus other Iraqi dinars held in Lebanese banks.