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Basayev might have left Chechnya- Report 11/24/2004 11:30:00 AM GMT Rebels suggested that Shamil Basayev has left the republic. Arrested rebels have said that Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev, Moscow's most wanted man, might have left the republic, Russian media reported on Wednesday. Sources from the Regional Operative Headquarters in the Northern Caucasus said that Basavev is probably hiding abroad. "According to our data, nobody knows where Basayev is. Rumors circulating among bandits indicate that Basayev has probably left Chechnya and is hiding abroad," the sources reported. Basayev claimed responsibility for the bloody Beslan school attack which claimed the lives...

GROZNY, November 23 (RIA Novosti) - A large-scale terrorist attack was averted in Ingushetia, a republic neighboring Chechnya. The attack was ordered by Chechen separatist leaders Shamil Basayev and Aslan Maskhadov, spokesman for the North Caucasus antiterrorism headquarters Ilya Shabalkin said Tuesday. "Operatives from the republic's FSB and Interior Ministry obtained information that terrorists under Maskhadov and Basayev's command were preparing a new large terrorist attack in Ingushetia," Mr. Shabalkin said. He said that according to the plan, during a provocation, bandits wearing Russian solider uniforms would attack several public buildings and apartment houses with 120mm mortar and several large-caliber...

   Back to Geopolitical News in Focus    Financial Sense Online - Home Page    Past Columns  Weekly Column - Tuesday, July 9, 2002 "The Chechen War and bin Laden's Nukes"by J. R. Nyquist “Evidence of the number of nuclear weapons purchased by the Chechens for bin Laden varies between ‘a few’ (Russian intelligence) to ‘more than twenty’ (conservative Arab intelligence services). Most of the weapons were purchased in four former Soviet states – Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Russia. These weapons are a mix of suitcase bombs and tactical warhead bombs. An Arab nuclear scientist, a Western-educated expert who...

A 30-year-old British computer expert, accused of running several Web sites to promote holy war and funnel money to terrorist organizations, was in a London court yesterday to fight a U.S. extradition request. Extradition papers filed in the case said that when Mr. Ahmad was arrested Aug. 5, he possessed classified documents describing movements of a U.S. Navy battle group in the Middle East — and instructions on how best to attack those vessels with rocket-propelled grenades from small boats. The papers said he also had communications with a U.S. Navy enlistee aboard the USS Benfold, a guided missile destroyer,...

GROZNY, SEPTEMBER 24, (RIA Novosti) - Federal forces, who are conducting some local special operations in several Chechen districts, want to flush out and liquidate terrorist leaders Shamil Basayev and Aslan Maskhadov, as well as rank-and-file bandits. This was disclosed to RIA Novosti here today at the regional command center for supervising the North Caucasian counter-terrorist operation. According to the center's spokesperson, four bandits have been killed during a special operation, which got underway in the evening of September 23 near Mairtup village, and which still continues. Two thugs were killed in the vicinity of Alleroi village. Both of...

MOSCOW, Sept 24 (Reuters) - Chechnya's rebel leader said on Friday that warlord Shamil Basayev would go on trial for the mass hostage-seizing at a Russian school that ended with more than 320 people being killed, half of them children. "I responsibly announce that after the end of the war, individuals guilty of conducting illegal acts, including Shamil Basayev, will be passed to a court of law," said Aslan Maskhadov in a statement on a Chechen rebel Web site responding to Basayev's claim to have masterminded the seizure of the school in Beslan. Maskhadov was elected president of a...

By turns, Shamil Basayev has been an Islamist terrorist in the murderous mold of Osama bin Laden, a top candidate for the presidency of Chechnya and the Chechen prime minister. Now he is back in his Osama bin Laden mode. As Americans debate future foreign policy--in an era when terrorism is the greatest threat--we would do well to study the Russian experience with Basayev. It raises the question: Will promoting democracy in remote lands be effective in defending America against terrorists? Basayev took credit last week for the hostage-taking raid on the school in Beslan, Russia. He also claimed responsibility...

When Shamil Basayev, a Chechen warlord waging Islamic "holy war" against Russia, first took up arms more than a decade ago, he also took up an unlikely role model: an Argentine atheist lionised by the Soviet Union. Along with his gun, Basayev carried a picture of Marxist rebel Che Guevara. "He was his idol," recalls Musa Shanibov, a former KGB informant who helped turn Basayev into a warrior during the turmoil that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union. "Like me, Basayev was a Communist Youth member and a romantic," says Shanibov. "I never saw him pray." Today, Basayev, 39,...

MOSCOW -- In an Internet posting, a Chechen warlord with a $10 million bounty on his head has apparently claimed responsibility for the Beslan school siege and promised more attacks on Russian civilians if Chechnya is not granted independence. The defiant, taunting, and rambling missive, allegedly written by Shamil Basayev, whom Russian authorities had already blamed for the massacre, offered the guerrilla's version of events at Beslan and expressed some passing regret at the loss of life, which it blamed on President Vladimir Putin. ''The Kremlin vampire destroyed and wounded 1,000 children and adults by giving the order to storm...

Chechen Warlord Basayev "not Worthy Of Existence": Armitage AFP: 9/17/2004 WARSAW (AFP) - Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, who has claimed responsibility for the deadly Beslan school hostage crisis in Russia, "is not worthy of existence," US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said during a visit to Poland. "Anyone who would use innocence for political aims is not worthy of existence in the type of societies we enjoy," Armitage said Friday. A text signed by Basayev and posted on the rebel website kavkazcenter.com on Friday said members of his group "carried out a series of successful military operations," including "the...

This article discusses the conversion of Baseyev, the suspected mastermind behind the Breslen child massacre, from a Che Guevera wannabe to a fundamentalist islamic radical capable of unimaginable crimes.

MOSCOW (AFP) - Chechnya (news - web sites)'s most notorious warlord Shamil Basayev has claimed responsibility for the deadly school hostage taking in southern Russia, according to a letter posted on a rebel website. Rebels commanded by Basayev have "carried out a series of successful military operations..." including "the operation in the town of Beslan," said a letter signed by the 39-year-old and posted on kavkazcenter.com. Its authenticity could not be immediately verified, but Chechen rebels often post their statements on the site. The letter was posted two weeks after the two-day hostage taking at a school in Beslan ended...

Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, in a statement issued on Friday, claimed responsibility for the Beslan school siege in which more than 320 hostages were killed, half of them children, according to a Chechen rebel Web site.

Who were the hostage-takers? The official version: According to the Kremlin, the terrorists were a mix of hardened mercenaries from the Arab world and the breakaway republic of Chechnya and the neighbouring Russian republic of Ingushetia. Russian authorities said 10 of the hostagetakers were "Arab fighters", one of the men was from North Ossetia and that the rest were Ingush or Chechens. Several shakidki, or female suicide bombers, known as "black widows", were reported to be inside. Islamist fighters from the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan were also said to be involved. Russian president Vladimir Putin said the fighters were...

When the Chechen terrorist mastermind Shamil Basayev hijacked hundreds of hostages including many schoolchildren in Beslan last week, it was not for a narrow nationalist cause. His objective is more radical - and less likely to be achieved - than the aims of more run-of-the-mill Chechen nationalists, who merely want full independence from Russia. He dreams of establishing an Islamic Emirate across the North Caucasus, and to do so, he has been fomenting the Islamic rebellion that plagues states across the broad stretch of territory from the Red Sea to the Caspian. As President Vladimir Putin waded through the cold...

This article appeared in Military Review June-July 1997 Introduction As the 20th Century draws to a close, military theorists and planners, in and out of uniform, are considering the implications that changes in the global security environment have for future conflict and war. The certainties of the Cold War have been replaced by a number of indeterminate, indistinct threats. As Desert Storm proved, the US military remains prepared to defeat large conventional forces, but is it ready to tackle those obscure dangers looming on the horizon? Consider the recent comments of the Marine Corps Commandant: "future war is most likely...

Russia's most wanted man, the Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, issued a statement yesterday in which he claimed full responsibility for the recent assassination of Chechnya's Moscow-backed president and appeared to suggest that Vladimir Putin might be next. In a text repeatedly referring to jihad, Allah and the Koran, Basayev, 39, seemed to suggest that his separatist fighters were preparing to assassinate President Putin or his Prime Minister, Mikhail Fradkov. The announcement, posted on a Chechen rebels' website called Kavkaz Center, included a sinister reference to Mr Putin's two teenage daughters, Ekaterina and Maria. Basayev described the murder of Akhmad Kadyrov...

Rebel attacks and land mines killed at least 11 Russian servicemen and pro-Moscow Chechen police officers in Chechnya over a 24-hour period, an official in the region's Kremlin-backed administration said Monday. Four of the Russian soldiers were killed and five others were wounded in rebel attacks on Russian outposts across Chechnya, the official said on condition of anonymity. Three servicemen died in separate skirmishes with rebels in Chechnya's southern mountains, and two were killed Sunday when their fuel-laden truck hit a land mine and exploded in a giant fireball outside the village of Samashki, the official said. On Monday, the...

Chechen rebels - who fought their way into the neighboring Dagestan region, killing nine border guards - released a group of hostages, left a village they had occupied, and slipped away in the dark, authorities said Tuesday. At least six of the rebels were tracked down and killed by Russian forces, the Interfax news agency reported. Dagestani police officials initially said most of the dozens of rebels were surrounded in the tiny village of Galatli. But Dagestani Interior Ministry spokeswoman Anzhela Martirosova later said the gunmen left the village before dawn, leaving behind their 11 hostages - seven from Galatli...

Gunmen from breakaway Chechnya raided a remote mountain village in neighboring Dagestan on Monday, killing at least nine border guards and escaping with four hostages, officials said. At least 25 gunmen ambushed an outpost near the border between war-ravaged Chechnya and Dagestan and Russia's frontier with Georgia. The gunmen opened fire at the checkpoint from a car and then quickly turned back, said Anzhela Martirosova, spokeswoman for the Dagestani branch of Russia's Interior Ministry. When the border guards rushed to pursue the car, militants fired from the roadside, killing an officer and eight troops, Martirosova said. Initial reports said 10...