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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Amanat leader killed |
| 2005-05-18 |
| Russian security services killed a prominent Chechen rebel wanted for involvement in a series of planned chemical attacks, a top spokesperson for Russian forces in Chechnya said on Tuesday. Major general Ilya Shabalkin identified the dead rebel leader as Alash Daudov, a former police official who was also accused of complicity in the seizure of hostages at a Moscow theatre in 2002 and a school in Beslan last September, as well as attacks on police in Grozny and in neighbouring Ingushetia in 2004. Shabalkin said Daudov and a Jordanian militant, Abu Mudjaid, were planning "a series of terrorist acts using strong poisons". He said Daudov was supposed to carry out attacks under orders from Abu Mudjaid, who allegedly organised a shipment of toxic substances from outside Russia to Chechnya. Shabalkin said Daudov was among three alleged militants killed in an abandoned house on the southern outskirts of Grozny after they tried to flee and opened fire on security services raiding the building. He said investigators earlier had found an unspecified amount of toxic substances, including cyanide. He appeared to be referring to a cache containing a cyanide-based substance that the federal security service (FSB) said earlier this month had been discovered in a settlement on the Chechnya-Ingushetia border. It said the components were not produced in Russia or elsewhere in the former Soviet Union. Shabalkin said Daudov headed the so-called Amanat jamaat, a group of adherents to the extremist Wahhabi branch of Islam. The FSB had said it had implicated the group in planning attacks using poisons and toxic substances to contaminate water supplies and crowded places in the capitals of the North Caucasus region and several large regional centres elsewhere in Russia. According to Russian news agencies, Shabalkin said Daudov had been the second-ranking rebel leader in Chechnya, after warlord Shamil Basayev. Shabalkin said Daudov had been carrying a sketch of a makeshift radio-controlled bomb, as well as maps of Grozny and the Caucasus cities of Nazran and Nalchik, which investigators believe indicated potential targets including water supplies, grain elevators and markets. Shabalkin said an electronic device for uncovering listening devices had been found amongst Daudov's things. He said experts had concluded the device that was produced on an "extremist base" in an Arab country he did not identify. Shabalkin said that found, was "the latest evidence of involvement by the intelligence services of certain states" that were acting against Russia, but he did not name any nations. He claimed foreign intelligence agencies helped militants in Chechnya with security and equipment and help them organise sophisticated terror attacks. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |