| Russian special services exposed an unknown relative of Shamil Basayev In the wake of general euphoria in connection with the murder last week of Shamil Basayev, who was considered the number one terrorist by the Russian authorities for more than ten years, the intelligence services seem to have decided to “continue the topic” by exposing his relatives. The joint press center at the Regional Operational Headquarters (ROH) for managing the counter-terrorism operation in the North Caucasus yesterday disseminated information that Shamil Basayev’s son-in-law was also detained in Dagestan.
According to ROSH, the husband of the sister of the militant leader was himself the leader of a bandit group, dealt with issues of financing the separatists and acted personally under the leadership of Shamil Basayev. The intelligence services of Dagestan and Chechnya, however, received this news with bewilderment and doubt. According to their operational data, the detainee - a certain Takaev - has not yet appeared on any of the lists of especially wanted bandits and has not been involved in any of the high-profile criminal cases related to terrorist attacks or sabotage.
According to ROSH representative Nikolai Varavin, employees of the criminal police, temporary operational group, departments and divisions of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs in the North Caucasus participated in the special operation to detain 24-year-old Ibragim, nicknamed Yusuf - presumably the son-in-law of Shamil Basayev. The ROSH did not name the name of the detainee, specifying only that in 2005-2006 he led a large group of extremists who staged a series of attacks on Russian military and police officers in several North Caucasian republics, as well as in the Kurchaloi, Urus-Martan and Nozhai-Yurt regions Chechnya. In addition, according to ROS, in 2005, Ibrahim traveled to Baku, where he personally negotiated with emissaries of international terrorist organizations regarding the financing of the Chechen separatist movement.
Representatives of the Regional Operational Headquarters did not explain yesterday where exactly and how the operation was carried out, where exactly Basayev’s son-in-law was captured, whether he resisted, etc. The special services and the prosecutor's office of Dagestan were also unable to report anything on this. They simply heard nothing not only about the special operation itself to detain Basayev’s son-in-law, but even that terrorist number one had such a relative.
They did not have information about large-scale special operations in the Chechen special services. They only recalled that on Friday night a certain Takaev was detained in the Novolaksky district of the republic; however, there seemed to be nothing remarkable about this young man. He was not wanted in connection with high-profile terrorist attacks or crimes, but was listed in the database only as a member of illegal armed groups (IAF). In principle, this list includes thousands of Chechens, and, as a rule, if they have not done anything terrible, most of them can count on amnesty.
Moreover, yesterday it remained unclear exactly how this Takaev was detained. According to some sources, the man tried to cross the mountains from Dagestan to Chechnya, carrying a machine gun. He was noticed by internal troops. Their command strengthened the border after an incident that occurred the day before with a group of teenagers who tried to break into Chechnya. According to other information, Takaev was actually taken from his own home. Moreover, the Chechen special services did not really know whether this Ibragim Takaev was really Basayev’s son-in-law. At the same time, the operatives did not hide the fact that the degree of kinship of this or that Chechen, if he was not involved in major terrorist attacks and sabotage, was of no particular interest to them. Tatiana GRITSENKO |
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