Criminal of all Chechnya
Maskhadov was finally assigned an article
If anyone had any illusions regarding Aslan Maskhadov, then yesterday the main directorate of the Prosecutor General's Office in the North Caucasus dispelled them. From the “legally elected president of Ichkeria,” Maskhadov turned into a simple Russian criminal. Or rather, not quite simple: a criminal case has been opened against him under a rare article - “armed rebellion.” This is punishable by up to 20 years in prison. True, Maskhadov still needs to be caught. But, perhaps, we will no longer have to catch another famous criminal - Salman Raduev. They say he was killed yesterday.

And his business is “War”
The fact that a criminal case was opened against Maskhadov is not surprising. It's strange that they did this only yesterday. Officials explain this by saying that Maskhadov, with his recent batch of threats against Russia and calls for his fighters to “destroy everything in their path” and “cut and trample” Russians indiscriminately, crossed all boundaries and “has clearly outlined his place in the current situation on the side of the gangs."
But the Chechen president “designated” this place a long time ago, which he did not hide. He called his conflicts with Basayev and others like him an “internal matter” and said that “in the face of an external threat, the Chechens are united.” Nevertheless, the Russian authorities apparently believed that Maskhadov could still be good for something. For example, calling on the militants to lay down their arms. In addition, human rights activists, along with some politicians, never tired of talking about some kind of negotiations with him. Now all these conversations will stop by themselves. Well, what kind of negotiations can you have with someone accused of a serious state crime? Only prosecutorial interrogations.
And the prosecutors, by the way, had been sharpening their grudge against Maskhadov for a long time and were waiting for orders. Back in December last year, the main directorate of the Prosecutor General's Office in the North Caucasus summoned him for questioning as a witness in the case of the murder of 34 Russian residents in the village of Mykenskaya, and, in addition, his name appears in another major criminal case codenamed “War” ( Kommersant wrote about these cases). It was initiated by the same department on the facts of crimes committed by militants and on the activities of Sharia courts.
Defense Minister Igor Sergeev told the prosecutors what to do with Maskhadov himself. Last Thursday, he said that “Maskhadov is the same bandit as Basayev, Udugov and Khattab” and it is high time to put him on the international wanted list. But for this it is necessary to initiate a criminal case. And he was aroused. True, it turned out that Maskhadov is still different from the company into which the minister included him. If those were put on the wanted list in cases of terrorism, then Maskhadov will be caught for a more, so to speak, serious crime - “Armed rebellion”, Article 279 of the Criminal Code of Russia.

Khattab dealt with Raduev
As follows from the case materials, Maskhadov began his criminal activities by ordering his Ministry of Justice in May 1998 to register the Congress of the Peoples of Ichkeria and Dagestan (KNID), headed by Shamil Basayev. Thus, Maskhadov “contributed to the creation of a terrorist organization” that carried out an armed attack of two thousand militants on Dagestan with the aim of “forcibly changing the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation and the formation of the Islamic Republic of Dagestan.” Then, in October last year, Maskhadov himself organized and led an armed rebellion in Chechnya. Moreover, as stated in the case materials, he appointed the terrorist Basayev as commander of the Eastern Front, assigning a number of “so-called brigadier generals” to his subordinates. As noted by the head of the main directorate of the Prosecutor General's Office in the North Caucasus, Yuri Biryukov, "the facts of the genocide of the Russian population in Chechnya and Maskhadov's involvement in them will also be investigated."
All that remains is to catch Maskhadov himself, who, according to the latest data, is now in the mountain village of Borzoi. True, it’s unlikely that anything will come of it. In any case, not one of the famous Chechen commanders on the wanted list has yet been caught. They are easier to kill. The first deputy chief of the General Staff, Valery Manilov, recently promised that there would be no mercy for them: “The leaders of the gangs will be captured or destroyed.”
Since the beginning of this year, a dozen well-known field commanders and figures from Maskhadov’s government have already been killed in Chechnya. Many are injured. The same Basayev became a legless invalid, and now he has no time for war. And yesterday a message came that another well-known terrorist, Salman Raduev, was killed in the Nozhai-Yurtovsky district. Moreover, it was not the feds who shot him, but Khattab. Allegedly, Raduev promised to hand over the latter to the feds for $1 million, but Khattab beat him to it. True, the generals are in no hurry to “bury” Raduev: “The information is being verified. But by and large, whether he is alive or not will no longer affect the course of the anti-terrorist operation.”
MAXIM J-STEPENIN

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 28 dated 02/19/2000, p. 1