The personality and biography of Zelimkhan Yandarbiev are rather contradictory. Someone considered him a fighter for the freedom of the Chechen Republic, and someone - a cruel criminal and terrorist. This article will highlight the main facts of his life and work.
The start of the journey
Zelimkhan Abdulmuslimovich Yandarbiev was born in the Kazakh SSR, East Kazakhstan region. Having matured, he moved to the Chechen Republic, to his family settlement of Starye Atagi. At the age of seventeen he worked at a construction site as a bricklayer. In 1972 he was called up for military service. After serving for two years, he worked on an oil well as an assistant driller. Graduated in 1981 from the Faculty of Philology of the University with a degree in Chechen Language and Literature in Grozny.
Below is a photo of Zelimkhan Yandarbiev.
After receiving a diploma of higher education, he worked as an editor, and then as head of the production department of the Chechen-Ingush book publishing house. Joined the Communist Party.
Literary activity
Initially, Yandarbiev was engaged in literary work. He was a poet and writer who wrote in the Chechen language. Including created literature for children. MoreDuring the years of Soviet power, he began to write works of art. He continued to write after the declaration of independence of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, holding leadership positions. He was the main ideologist of a free Chechnya.
Zelimkhan Yandarbiev's poems were published in various collections. He published the first two collections of poems "Plant, comrades, trees", "Zodiac Signs" in 1983. Around the same period, he was a member and also led the literary circle "Prometheus" in the capital of Chechnya, where, according to him, "he wrote poetry in the Chechen language, which for many party officials was equated with anti-Soviet propaganda." In 1984 he became a member of the Union of Writers of the Chechen Autonomous Soviet Republic, in 1985 - the Union of Writers of the USSR. In 1986, he was chosen as the editor-in-chief of the Rainbow children's publication. Yandarbiev also released a collection of poems “Sing a melody”, and a presentation of his play was made at the local theater. He devoted two years to improving his writing skills at literary courses at the university in Moscow. In 1990, the fourth collection of his poems, Life of Law, was published. In 1995, a book of his memoirs "Ichkeria - the War for Independence" was published in Lvov. In 1997, the book publishing house of the Republic of Dagestan published the sixth book of his poems. Zelimkhan Yandarbiev's songs also appeared in publications in the Chechen language.
Also, the following works were published by this author: “In Anticipation of Independence”, “Holy War and Problemsmodern world”, “Whose Caliphate?”, "The True Face of Terrorism", collections of poems "The Ballad of Jihad", "Gallery of Memories".
Party activities
Yandarbiyev became the leader of the Chechen nationalist movement as the Soviet Union began to crumble. In July 1989, he founded the Barth (Unity) Party, a secular democratic party that promoted the unity of Caucasian ethnic groups against "Russian imperialism". In May 1990, he also founded and led the Vainakh Democratic Party, the first Chechen political party to fight for the independence of Chechnya. This party initially represented the interests of both Chechens and Ingush. However, this lasted until the split that occurred after the declaration of independence of Chechnya from the Russian Federation.
In November 1990, he became deputy chairman of the newly formed All-Russian Congress of the Chechen People (NCHR), which, under the leadership of Dzhokhar Dudayev, supplanted the leadership of the Soviet era. With Dudayev, he signed an agreement with the Ingush leaders dividing the joint Chechen-Ingush republic into two parts. In the first Chechen parliament, which existed from 1991 to 1993, Yandarbiev headed the media committee. In April 1993 he was appointed vice-president of Ichkeria. In April 1996, after the assassination of his predecessor, Dzhokhar Dudayev, he became acting president.
Meeting with Yeltsin
At the end of May 1996, Yandarbiyev led a Chechen delegation that met with the PresidentRussia Boris Yeltsin and Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin in connection with the peace talks in the Kremlin that led to the signing of a ceasefire agreement on May 27, 1996. In 1997, during the signing of the Russian-Chechen peace treaty in Moscow, Yandarbiev famously forced his Russian counterpart, President Boris Yeltsin, to change places at the negotiating table in order to be accepted as the head of a sovereign state.
Participation in the presidential elections in Chechnya
Yandarbiev ran in the presidential elections held in Chechnya in February 1997, but lost to the separatists' popular military leader, General Aslan Maskhadov, receiving 10 percent of the popular vote and coming in third behind Maskhadov and Shamil Basayev. Together with Maskhadov, Yandarbiev took part in the signing of a "lasting" peace treaty in Moscow, which, however, did not bring any result.
Conflict with Maskhadov
People's support for Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev declined sharply in 1998, when he was accused of attempting to assassinate Maskhadov. In September 1998, Maskhadov publicly denounced Yandarbiev, accusing him of importing the radical Islamic philosophy of "Wahhabism" and of being responsible for "anti-state activities", including anti-government speeches and public meetings, as well as organizing illegal armed groups. Subsequently, Yandarbiyev joined forces with the radical Islamist opposition against Maskhadov's government.
In August-September 1999Yandarbiyev was chosen as a key figure when a coalition of Islamist militants invaded the neighboring republic of Dagestan to support the war effort. This invasion was led by the Islamic International Brigade. At the beginning of the second Chechen war, Yandarbiev went abroad. He traveled to countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates and eventually settled in Qatar in 1999, where he tried to gain the support of influential Qatari Muslims in the struggle for the independence of Chechnya.
International Wanted
After Zelimkhan Yandarbiev's involvement in the hostage-taking in Moscow in October 2002, he was placed on the Interpol wanted list along with other terrorists and criminal figures: Maskhadov, Zakaev, Nukhaev.
Russia made the first of several extradition requests in February 2003, calling Yandarbiev a major international terrorist who is financed and supported by al-Qaeda. According to the federal intelligence services, he was a key link in the Chechen resistance. In June 2003, his name was subsequently blacklisted for al-Qaeda suspects by the United Nations Security Council Sanctions Committee.
Terrorist activity
Yandarbiev was also accused of assaulting law enforcement officers and subversive activities against federal troops. He played a key role in directing the flow of funds from the Arab states to support the radicalChechen group, called the Islamic Special Purpose Regiment. This terrorist group is responsible for the hostage taking in the Moscow theater. He was declared the main accomplice and financier of the terrorist attack on Dubrovka, which claimed the lives of more than a hundred people.
In January 2004, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev in Qatar widely publicized the BBC documentary "Four Smells of Paradise", in which the filmmakers called him "the spiritual leader of the Chechens and a poet on the path to jihad."
Murder in Qatar
In February 2004, Zelimkhan Yandarbiev was killed by a bomb in his SUV in the Qatari capital, Doha. Yandarbiev was seriously wounded and died in the hospital. His thirteen-year-old son Daoud was also seriously injured. Some media reported that two of his bodyguards were killed, but this has not been confirmed.
Initially it was not clear who was responsible for the murder of Zelimkhan Yandarbiev. Suspicions fell on the foreign intelligence service and other Russian intelligence agencies, which denied any involvement. A version of internal hostility among the leadership of the Chechen rebels was also considered. Aslan Maskhadov's unrecognized foreign ministry condemned the attack as a "Russian terrorist attack", comparing it to the 1996 attack that killed Dzhokhar Dudayev. The car bomb that killed Yandarbiev eventually led to Qatar's first counterterrorism law, which stated that the occupationterrorist activities will be punishable by death or life imprisonment.
Who killed Zelimkhan Yandarbiev?
The day after the assassination, the Qatari authorities arrested three Russians in the villa of the Russian embassy. One of them, Alexander Fetisov, first secretary of the Russian embassy in Qatar, was released in March due to his diplomatic status. The other two, GRU agents Anatoly Yablochkov (also known as Belashkov) and Vasily Pugachev (sometimes erroneously referred to as Bogachev), were accused of killing Yandarbiev, attempting to kill his son Daud Yandarbiev, and smuggling weapons into Qatar. According to Moscow, Yablochkov and Pugachev were secret intelligence agents sent to the Russian embassy in Doha to gather information about global terrorism. Acting Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov promised state support for the suspects and said their imprisonment was illegal. There were some suggestions that Fetisov was released in exchange for Qatari fighters detained in Moscow.
Litigation
The trial was closed to the public after the defendants said they were tortured by Qatari police in the days following their arrest while they were held incommunicado. Two Russians claimed to have been beaten, deprived of food, and attacked by guard dogs. Based on these allegations of torture and the fact that two officers were arrested in an extraterritorial compound belonging to the Russian embassy, Russia demanded the immediate release of its citizens. They were represented in court by a lawyer from a law firm founded by Nikolai Yegorov, a friend and fellow student of Vladimir Putin at Leningrad State University.
Qatari prosecutors concluded that the suspects received an order to eliminate Zelimkhan Yandarbiev personally from Sergei Ivanov. On June 30, 2004, both Russians were sentenced to life imprisonment. When sentencing, the judge stated that they acted on orders from the Russian leadership.
Court sentence
The Doha court verdict caused intense tension between Qatar and Russia, and on December 23, 2004, Qatar agreed to extradite the prisoners to Russia, where they would serve life sentences. However, Yablochkov and Puchachev were welcomed back to Moscow in January 2005, but soon disappeared from public view. Russian prison authorities acknowledged in February 2005 that they were not in prison, but said the sentence handed down in Qatar was "inappropriate" in Russia.
There were also other versions of the murder of an influential Chechen terrorist: a blood feud or contradictions between the bandit groups themselves over control of large cash flows. Both versions were proposed on the day of the terrorist attack and the death of Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, but were not confirmed during the proceedings in Qatar.
