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Former Chechen Leader Yandarbiyev Boomed
Former Chechen President Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, an Islamic extremist linked by Moscow to al Qaeda, died on Friday from injuries sustained when his car was hit by a blast in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar, police said.
I always like starting the morning with good news.
The blast seriously injured Yandarbiyev, who died later in the intensive care unit at Hamad Hospital in the capital Doha, and killed two people traveling with him.
A triple! Wonder who the other two are, er, were?
The cause of the explosion was still unclear.
He was a big shot, so I’d rule out work accident.
A hospital spokesman told Reuters Yandarbiyev was leaving a mosque after Friday prayers in Doha’s northern Dasma district when the blast occurred.
That seems to happen a lot, doesn’t it?
Al Jazeera television showed pools of blood beside the charred remains of a white off-road vehicle and bodies covered with sheets being taken away by ambulance as a police sniffer dog circled the wreck.
Sigh, it’s a beautiful word picture.
Yandarbiyev, who had been living in exile in Doha for more than three years, was the first Chechen separatist to be added at Russia’s request last year to a U.N. list of groups and people with suspected ties to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network. Russia, which has been battling separatist insurgents in predominantly Muslim Chechnya on and off for nearly a decade with the loss of tens of thousands of lives, considered him a leading Islamic extremist. Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov told Interfax news agency: "Yandarbiyev was the chief ideologue of the separatists and later of their terrorist organizations which brought such tragic consequences to Chechnya. "You will find no one (in Chechnya) who will regret what happened to Yandarbiyev."
"Maybe his Mom, but she's been dead for years. He shot her."
Kadyrov, elected in polls organized by Moscow last year as part of a plan to stabilize the region, would not say who might have been responsible for Yandarbiyev’s death. "Thousands of people, whose relatives had died or suffered as a result of Yandarbiyev’s actions, might have had a reason to do this," Kadyrov said.
"Reach out, reach out and touch someone!"
Moscow suspects Yandarbiyev of links to the seizure of a Moscow theater and 700 theatergoers by extreme Chechen rebels in October 2002. The seizure ended with the death of 129 hostages and 41 guerrillas when Russian troops stormed the building using a lethal gas. He has been on the Interpol wanted list since 2001 along with Maskhadov and other prominent Chechen rebels.
KGB hit, perhaps? Internal power struggle? Oh, well, he’s dead either way.
Posted by: Steve 2004-02-13
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=26163