Abdul-Khalim Saidullayev, the Chechen rebel "president" killed Saturday by pro-Russian forces, was the fourth pro-independence leader of the Muslim province to be killed in more than a decade of conflict with Moscow. Saidullayev's precedessor, Aslan Maskhadov, was also killed by pro-Russian forces in Chechnya on March 8, 2005. His death came after those of Akhmad Kadyrov, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev and Djokhar Dudayev. Maskhadov was killed after a battle with Russian forces in the Chechen village of Tolstoi-Yurt after he was, according to Russian officials, trapped in a bunker under a house there.Dudayev's killing, in April 1996, resulted from a bizarre blend of high technology and long-distance military intelligence as the Russian air force finally got their man after several attempts. Dudayev, 52, was in the village of Gekhi-Chu, about 30 kilometers southwest of the capital Grozny, when he answered a satellite telephone call from a Russian politician in Moscow who was ostensibly acting as a go-between in impending peace negotiations. But minutes later, two missiles exploded at the exact spot where he was standing and he died of his injuries shortly afterwards. Russian authorities at the time confirmed that the missiles had been guided to their target by the signal emitted by Dudayev's satellite phone.
Previous attempts by the air force to eliminate the man whose proud boast was "I have only one bodyguard - Allah," had failed as Dudayev had hung up too quickly. Dudayev had been elected president in October 1991 and proclaimed unilateral Chechen independence the following month.