"I come to bury Yandarbiyev, not to praise him..."
The assassinated ex-Chechen president - branded a terrorist by the Kremlin and Washington - was praised as a holy warrior for Islam as he was laid to rest with honors Saturday in a cemetery normally reserved for members of the royal family of this U.S.-allied Gulf sheikdom.
The Qatari Interior Minister is a known al-Qaeda mole (as appears to be his Saudi counterpart), so this is hardly surprising ...
Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, killed when an assassin’s bomb ripped through his SUV as he left Friday prayers with his teenage son, was "a holy warrior for the sake of God, and part of the struggling Chechen people," Sheik Ali Quradaghi said in his funeral oration.
| Kinda hints at which side he's on. But we knew that... I believe "Quradaghi" is an inventive transliteration of Youssef al-Qaradawi, whom we've heard from periodically over the past few years. |
"The Chechens will not be intimidated by this cowardly act. We must stand alongside them with all our capabilities," the sheik told 700 mourners who gathered for the funeral ceremony.
| "So dig deep, brethren and sistern! Putcher money where my mouth is!" |
Quradaghi, who delivered the funeral oration, did not blame the Russians - who have denied any connection to the killing , but he said the Kremlin had "displaced our Chechen brothers. Just like the Soviet Union was defeated (in Afghanistan), so will Russia be." An aide to Yandarbiyev, Ibrahim Gabi, blamed the Kremlin and Russia’s Federal Security Service, the FSB, for Yandarbiyev’s killing, a pro-rebel Web site reported.
| Who else are they going to blame? Each other? Though in this case it's probably correct. Remember that the Russers declared only about ten days before the boom that they were going after the masterminds behind the Nord-Ost Theater siege. Yandarbiyev was on the list. Is FSB doing a Mossad-Black September act? |
"There’s no doubt that Lubyanka is behind this bloody terrorist act," the site quoted Gabi as saying, referring to the infamous Moscow building that was the headquarters of the Soviet KGB and now houses the FSB, its main successor. Among the mourners at al-Rayan cemetery were a state minister and a family representative of Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, who rules the Gulf nation. Also there was Abassi Madani, one of Algeria’s top two Islamic leaders.
Isn’t he the FIS front man who’s been making threats lately? Be interested to learn which state minister was present ...
Madani said the assassination was "an ugly crime. It was the act of a coward. The cowardly Russian position will only add to its shame. Victory is close, God willing."
| And if not, He'll send another earthquake, no doubt... |
Yandarbiyev had seldom been seen in public since he settled here, but he occasionally appeared on Qatar’s Al-Jazeera satellite television channel where he commented on the Chechen-Russian conflict. Other than his 13-year-old son Daoud, wounded in the attack but said to be recovering well, details on surviving members of his family were not available. Acting Chechen Prime Minister Eli Isayev, a Russian ally, said Yandarbiyev’s assassination "confirms once again the common truth that any criminal, especially of such a rank, will sooner or later get his punishment. Yandarbiyev got his in Qatar." 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. |