A prominent member of a Chechen illegal armed group, Akikhan Mashugov, who is believed to have killed at least six law enforcement and security officers, has been killed in Chechnya, spokesman for the federal forces in the North Caucasus Maj. Gen. Ilya Shabalkin told Interfax on Thursday. "Special services killed one Akikhan Mashugov in the village of Chervlnyonnaya in Chechnya's Shelkovskaya district. He had been searched by law enforcement agencies for murdering two FSB [Federal Security Service] officers, including deputy chief of the FSB office in Grozny, in the summer of this year," Shabalkin said.More from MosNews:
Russian forces killed a rebel believed to have been involved in the 1998 kidnapping of three British nationals in Chechnya, the chief spokesman for anti-terrorist operations in the North Caucasus, Major-General Ilya Shabalkin, told ITAR-TASS news agency. Shabalkin said the rebel was shot after he resisted arrest by police officers. The spokesman refused to divulge the rebel's name citing the interests of investigation. He said the search for his accomplices was continuing in the republic. Three Britons and a New Zealander were abducted from the Chechen capital, Grozny, in early October 1998, following a shoot-out between their bodyguards and a gang of kidnappers. The hostages — Britons Peter Kennedy, Darren Hickey, and Rudolf Petschi, and New Zealand's Stanley Shaw — were kidnapped while working for Granger Telecom, a British telephone company, installing 300,000 telephone lines across Chechnya. Two months later their remains were discovered on a roadside. The men had been beaten and starved before being beheaded by their kidnappers.