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Surrealpolitik - Basayev colleague based in DC
Apologies in advance for the editing, I tried to cut out as much of the background material as possible. If this guy is a Chechen terrorist, though, there is no way I want him on US soil.The apartment felt like a safe house. The curtains were drawn. Someone else's family portraits hung on the walls, and a stranger's books lined the shelves. Other than a small framed photograph of the sons he had not seen in nearly three years, Ilyas Akhmadov hadn't bothered to unpack in the two weeks that he'd been there. His meager belongings stood near the door, ready for a hasty exit. The 44-year-old fugitive Chechen rebel leader had made more than a few hurried departures on his way to becoming one of Russia's most wanted men, and he had been almost constantly on the move since fellow insurgents smuggled him out of war-torn Grozny in 1999. But on the day intermediaries arranged for us to first meet last fall, Akhmadov seemed anxious not to leave the temporary sanctuary offered by this borrowed two-bedroom apartment. "Will you have another coffee?" he asked shyly in Russian. It was his fifth and my fourth, and the air had grown thick from countless cigarettes. As he spoke of Chechnya's two-century struggle for independence, smoke swirled around his spiky gray mustache, and, in the dark, caffeinated atmosphere, he looked momentarily like the sinister image of the jihadist mastermind he is accused of being. "I'm a little afraid to go outside," he finally confessed. "Someone might recognize me." Posted by: Dan Darling 2005-03-21 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=59430 |