| Maskhadov's guard was saved from gangrene Over the weekend, the security service of the President of Chechnya and the regional anti-terrorist headquarters of the feds joyfully commented on the voluntary surrender of another close confidant of the head of Ichkeria, Aslan Maskhadov. On Friday, the surrendered man, introduced as the head of the Maskhadosv security guard, Shaa Turlaev, was taken to a hospital in the city of Gudermes in serious condition. There, the best doctors in the republic decided to amputate the militant’s left leg, saving him from gangrene. According to Ramzan Kadyrov, who has already recorded another honorable surrender, negotiations with this commander have been ongoing for the last few weeks. He supposedly already agreed to surrender, but then his old wound suddenly festered. He could no longer leave the forest on his own, so the soldiers who picked him up urgently handed the militant over to the hands of doctors. Ramzan Kadyrov believes that in the coming days, about two dozen of Turlaev’s subordinates will surrender, who seem to have already agreed to lay down their arms - if their boss, after recovery, does not end up behind bars.
It turns out that the Chechen administration has undertaken to protect the surrendered militant from any claims from Russian law enforcement agencies. Legally, this is not easy: the amnesty period has long expired, and the Gudermes patient could hardly count on it - he took a very active part in the hostilities. But Mr. Kadyrov already has experience of bypassing the fight against such formalities: so far this is best confirmed by the example of the former Minister of Defense of Ichkeria Magomed Khambiev, who surrendered on March 8. True, the Russian prosecutor's office has not yet completed its investigation into the ex-minister. But this did not stop him from speaking on Chechen television on Friday. There the general said that he had signed an order to disband the last Ichkerian units.
The Chechen authorities clearly believe that the propaganda effect of prominent militants defecting to their side is greater than the show trial that the prosecutor's office could organize for any of them, and the Russian Criminal Code can easily be ignored for the sake of political expediency. Ramzan Kadyrov believes that Aslan Maskhadov himself is already thinking about surrender. But the militants have yet to be convinced of this. Their websites persistently publish information that Shaa Turlaev did not surrender to anyone, but was wounded in battle, captured and taken to the hospital legless. It is also reported there, by the way, that Magomed Khambiev came out of the underground not at all out of conviction, but solely for the sake of his relatives, whom Kadyrov’s men, in fact, took hostage. As for the so-called “head of the special department” Boris Aidamirov, whose surrender was also widely publicized, he, according to the “Ichkerian command,” has nothing to do with the resistance at all. Ivan SUKHOV |
|
