Unchangeable Beard

The special services could not find a worthy reason for the release of the bandit

The investigation into the case of one of the most odious Chechen field commanders, Lecha Islamov, nicknamed Beard, was completed by representatives of the Investigation Department of the FSB of the Russian Federation. Recently, his materials were transferred to the Krasnodar Regional Court. Back in the 80s, this man was known to the special services as the leader of Chechen criminal clans in Moscow, and later the FSB started a hunt for Islamov, who headed one of the gangs in his homeland. Beard was captured in 2000, but nothing was heard about his case for quite some time. According to our information, the special services kept the field commander “in reserve”, as a trump card in case of an exchange for one of the famous Chechen hostages. However, Islamov was never released: either the people offered by the militants for Beard were considered insufficiently significant by the special services for an equal exchange, or the deals fell through.

According to the capital's detectives, Lechi Islamov has been at the top of the two most powerful Chechen criminal gangs in Moscow since the 80s - Central and Yuzhnoportovaya. The brigades' activities were varied: racketeering, kidnappings, trafficking in stolen cars, etc. The police detained Islamov more than once, but, as a rule, he did not stay behind bars for long. After the events in Chechnya in 1995, Beard returned to his homeland, where he led a large detachment of militants. According to counterintelligence information, he was responsible, among other things, for the purchase and delivery of weapons to the separatists. As the special services once claimed, it was Islamov who was directly involved in the abduction in 1996 of 29 employees of the Grozenergo company.

The FSB managed to capture Beard only in the summer of 2000. The operatives learned that a Chechen came to one of the villages and stayed in a private house without security. At night, a capture group broke in and took Islamov straight to Lefortovo. At the same time, he was charged with a number of charges, including organizing gangs and illegal possession of weapons.

As people from Islamov’s circle told us, all this time the special services were trying to involve Lechi in operations to free “high-profile” Chechen prisoners. So, at first they allegedly promised him freedom if he helped release the chairman of the Samara branch of the Congress of Soviet Women organization, Svetlana Kuzmina, who spent more than two years with the militants. Islamov, through his relatives, managed to get the woman released, but he himself remained in the pre-trial detention center. According to one version, the terms of the deal with the authorities only included a mitigation of the charges against Borod; according to another, the hostage was considered not a large enough figure to be exchanged for a field commander.

The secret services remembered Islamov again when Lieutenant Colonel Sergei Boryaev was kidnapped in Chechnya. Khattab, in exchange for the officer, asked to release 25 Chechens allegedly captured by the federals. However, most of the people on this list did not find the authorities, and the process of negotiations with Khattab was delayed. After a scandal broke out in the press around the story of Boryaev’s release, the special services, according to our information, again turned to Boroda for help, but were too late. When Islamov got involved to solve the problem, it was no longer possible to save the lieutenant colonel.

Apparently, having never found a worthy use for Beard, the FSB eventually completed the investigation and recently transferred the materials to the Krasnodar Regional Court, since Chechnya does not yet have its own courts.

Alexander SHVAREV