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A mysterious accident in which one of Russia's most powerful spies was found dead on a Turkish beach has provoked speculation that the deputy head of the country's foreign military intelligence service had been murdered. (snip) The general was last seen visiting the building site for a new Russian military base in the Syrian coastal city of Tartus, which is being expanded as a base for Russia's Black Sea fleet. After his visit, he left for a meeting with Syrian intelligence agents. He then went missing, the Turkish newspaper Vatan reported today. (snip) The Kremlin assigned Ivanov to lead its...

Putin blamed for gagging Chechen By Lawrence Smallman Wednesday 02 June 2004, 15:04 Makka Time, 12:04 GMT The widow of assassinated ex-Chechen president Salim Khan Yandarbiyev has spoken out after a Russian TV channel killed an interview with her and sacked the reporter. Leonid Parfyonov, one of the few Russian journalists prepared to criticise President Vladimir Putin's government, was fired by NTV on Tuesday after condemning the company's decision not to air an interview with Malika Yandarbiyev. Salim Khan Yandarbiyev was president of Chechnya for a brief period after it won de-facto independence from Russia in 1996, later losing out...

Some Chechens link assassination to internal disputes but rebels blame Russian intelligence agents DOHA - Qatar has arrested two people in connection with last week's assassination of former Chechen separatist leader Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev. An Interior Ministry official told the state news agency QNA on Thursday the two unnamed suspects were being interrogated over the killing. It did not give further details. A car blast killed Yandarbiyev, a former guerilla leader and Chechen president linked by Moscow to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda group, when he left a mosque after prayers in the capital of Doha last Friday. Pro-Moscow Chechens suggested Yandarbiyev's...

RUSSIA: KGB (oops, FSB) Denies Whacking the Bagman February 14, 2004: Former (1996-97) president of independent (after a short war with Russia) Chechnya Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev was assassinated by a car bomb in Qatar. Yandarbiyev has been living in exile in Qatar for the last three years and is accused by Russia of running part of the overseas fund raising network that funded the Chechen resistance in Chechnya. The FSB (the post-Cold War name of the old KGB) said, interestingly, that it was not responsible and had not done that sort of thing since 1959. Nothing was heard from the GRU...

UPDATED AT 11:27 PM EST Friday, Feb. 13, 2004 Killing of key Chechen separatist seen as retaliation By MARK MacKINNON From Saturday's Globe and Mail Moscow — One of the key figures of the Chechen separatist movement, who was near the top of Russia's most-wanted list, was killed by a car bomb yesterday, one week after an attack on the Moscow subway that was blamed on Chechen rebels. Former Chechen president Zelimkham Yandarbiyev died in a Qatari hospital yesterday, hours after a bomb tore through his white Jeep, killing two bodyguards and seriously wounding his 13-year-old son. Mr. Yandarbiyev, who...

DOHA, Qatar (AP) - Chechnya's exiled former president, wanted by Russia for terrorism and ties to al-Qaida, was assassinated Friday when a bomb blew apart his car as he left a mosque with his teenage son. Russia's security services denied any involvement in the death of Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, 51. But a Chechen rebel group called the slaying "the latest bloody Kremlin crime." Yandarbiyev's 13-year-old son was critically wounded in the 12:45 p.m. blast after prayers in the capital, Doha, according to an Interior Ministry statement and Hamad General Hospital. The white SUV was demolished by the blast. A body lay...

FORMER CHECHEN PRESIDENT DIES IN BLAST Former Chechen president Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev has died following a bomb attack on his car in Doha. Two of his bodyguards were also killed in the blast. The ex-leader was taken to hospital after he was seriously injured in the explosion. He later died. The Qatar-based Al-Jazeera news channel said that Russia had demanded Yandarbiyev's extradition from Qatar. It is believed he was involved in the seizure of more than 800 hostages at a Moscow theatre in October 2002 where 129 hostages died. Yandarbiyev was interim president after Dzhokhar Dudayev was killed by Russian forces...