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Russians Kill Chechen Rebel Leader

The Russian Federation was able to notch a victory for its fight to keep the breakaway republic of Chechnya under firmer control of Moscow with the announcement that Russian security forces killed Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev, a leader of the Chechen Muslim rebel forces, over the weekend. Sadulayev was shot in the town of Argun, east of the Chechen capital, Grozny. The Russian Federal Security Service, successor to the infamous KGB, reported that Sadulayev was killed after resisting arrest.

And how did Moscow go about discerning Sadulayev?s whereabouts? For about $55, Russian security agents were able to convince a member of the Islamic terrorist?s inner circle to give up the information. Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev took over from former Chechen Islamist rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov after he was killed by the Russians in March 2005. However big a prize Sadulayev was to the Russians, public enemy number one in the Russian Federation can likely be considered the Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev.

Basayev is the arch-terrorist responsible for numerous Chechen-perpetrated atrocities in the name of Islamist-nationalism, including the tragic attack and hostage situation in Beslan at a school in September 2004 that ended with 331 dead, mostly children taken hostage by Basayev?s forces. In October 2002, Chechen forces under Basayev took 800 hostage in a theater in Moscow, a situation that also ended tragically. Chechnya?s Moscow-backed prime minister, Ramzan Kadyrov, has vowed to quickly track down Basayev and Doku Umarov, another Chechen warlord.