Posted on 12/15/2002 11:43:00 AM PST by Destro
Convicted Chechen warlord dies in prison
Sun, Dec 15, 2002
By MARA D. BELLABY, Associated Press Writer
MOSCOW - A convicted Chechen warlord who led a bloody raid on a southern Russian hospital in 1996 that killed 78 people has died while serving a life sentence in prison, Russia's Justice Ministry said Sunday.
Salman Raduyev died in the Perm region, about 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) east of Moscow, where he was confined to a high security hard labor camp, a ministry spokeswoman said.
"He died of natural causes," Justice Minister Yuri Kalinin said in televised remarks. "We just received the report of the pathologist who conducted the autopsy. He died of hemorrhagic vasculitis, or internal bleeding."
Kalinin urged journalists not to speculate about possible foul play.
"I can admit that some conjectures could appear ... but this would be absolutely groundless," he said, according to the Interfax news agency.
Raduyev, who had enjoyed considerable notoriety in Russia but was less respected in Chechnya (news - web sites), was 35.
He was the second prominent Chechen rebel to die in Russian custody this year. In August, Raduyev's accomplice in a deadly 1996 raid on a town in southern Russia, Turpal-Ali Atgeriyev died in a prison hospital in the Urals mountains city of Yekaterinburg. Officials said he died of leukemia.
Raduyev became the first prominent Chechen rebel warlord to be prosecuted by Russian authorities. Last December, a court in southern Russian sentenced him to life imprisonment after he was found guilty of terrorism and murder. Atgeriyev was sentenced to 15 years in prison at the same trial.
The charges against them focused on a January 1996 raid on the southern Russian town of Kizlyar. They and other rebels took hundreds of hostages at a local hospital and used some of them as human shields. The raid, which came at the end of the first Chechen war, left 78 people dead.
Raduyev's act seemed to be an attempt to mimic the success of popular Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev, who had led fighters into the southern town of Budyonnovsk, near the border with breakaway Chechnya, in June 1995. Basayev's fighters took more than 1,000 people hostage in a hospital. After gun battles that killed more than 100, Russian forces reached agreement to free the hostages and let the raiders escape back into the mountains.
Basayev, one of Chechnya's chief warlords, remains at large and is one of Russia's most wanted men. He claimed responsibility for the Oct. 23-26 siege of a Moscow theater that ended after Russian special forces stormed the building, killing 41 hostage-takers. At least 129 of the hostages also died from the effects of a narcotic gas used to knock out the militants.
Raduyev had been injured numerous times as a top separatist warlord. During his trial last year, he sat in a cage, wearing a baseball cap and large aviator sunglasses that the Russian media reported was to hide significant plastic surgery.
He maintained that he only obeyed orders from late separatist leader Dzhokhar Dudayev when he conducted the raid, and that the court was trying to "make me a scapegoat."
Russian troops pulled out of Chechnya in 1996 after failing to overcome separatists. Russian forces returned in 1999 after rebel raids in a neighboring region and after apartment-house bombings that killed more than 300 people in Russian cities. Russian President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites) has rejected calls to negotiate with elected separatist President Aslan Maskhadov, whom the Kremlin blames in connection with this year's hostage-taking.
we all die of "Natural causes".... it's just how we get to the no blood pumping out of the heart is the interesting part.... just your everyday internal bleeding.. hmmmmmmm, let's see Chechen... muslim.... dies... oh well... so it goes.. po-tweet.
Kalinin urged journalists not to speculate about possible foul play. "I can admit that some conjectures could appear ... but this would be absolutely groundless," he said, according to the Interfax news agency.
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