Free Republic

In accordance with a tradition that has been in place since 2005, Ramzan Kadyrov rang in 2012 with his estimate of the number of insurgents in Chechnya. Citing numerous operational sources, he stated that there are only 50 or fewer militants left in the republic. Kadyrov asserted that members of the illegal armed underground who recently surrendered had confirmed this information (www.rg.ru, January 3). However, Kadyrov did not elaborate on how a low ranking militant could have known how many rebels there were left scattered across Chechnya. It is unlikely that even Chechen rebel commanders of the highest rank know...

Strasbourg reaches a decision on ‘Nord-Ost’. On December 20th, the European Court of Human Rights almost fully satisfied claims by victims and relatives of the deceased victims of the terrorist attack on the theatrical center at Dubrovka. The applicants themselves consider today’s decision by Strasbourg to be a real victory, and had been waiting for several years. Now they hope that an objective investigation into the incident will take place. The victims and relatives of the deceased hostages filed their claims with the European Court back in 2003. In their petitions, they demanded that those who planned the hostage rescue...

China’s Nobel-naysaying alternative honors Putin with Confucius Peace Prize By Associated Press, Updated: Friday, December 9, 5:34 PM BEIJING — The sponsors of a would-be Chinese alternative to the Nobel Peace Prize held their second award ceremony on Friday, handing a gold Confucius statue and a certificate meant for Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to a pair of exchange students, an organizer said. The Confucius Prize ceremony comes a day before the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize is to be awarded in Oslo, Norway, and as a group of Nobel laureates launched a new campaign calling for China to release last...

The beach is crowded with men these days. Powerful, muscled Dagestani men, who practice martial arts and wrestle on the littered sand of the Caspian Sea shore in the capital city of Makhachkala. Some sit around, enjoying boiled ears of corn with butter and salt; others play soccer or ride on their buddies’ shoulders in the waves, competing to see who can last longest without collapsing into the water. Rare groups of shy women in long flannel dresses enter the sea holding children by the hand; their long skirts and colorful hijabs immediately soak up salty water, like sponges....

“The language has become smaller by one, diminishing us. Now your words, like the feathers of dead birds, are in dictionaries. In heaven there are a thousand blank pages, pages you never finished...” It is almost as if Joseph Brodsky were not eulogizing W.H. Auden, but Anya. How many years have we been without Anna Politkovskaya... 2, 3, 4, 5? Yes, five years already. Still, strange as it sounds, in the early years it seemed easier than it is now. Back then, along with the pain, many still clenched their fists and were still courageous. But then there was the...

The relatives of three Chechen men gunned down in Istanbul last Friday have accused a Russian secret service hit squad of executing them on the Kremlin's orders. The triple murder was carried out by a lone gunman in less than thirty seconds using a 9mm pistol fitted with a silencer. It brought the number of Chechens assassinated in the Turkish city in the last four years to at least six. The gunman pumped eleven bullets into the three men in a busy Istanbul street before speeding off in a black getaway car. One of the murdered men, 33-year-old Berg-Haj Musayev,...

Russian security serves have foiled a plot by a group of Islamists to blow up a high-speed train running between Moscow and Saint Petersburg, the Kommersant business daily said Monday. A blast on the same route that authorities blamed on Muslim rebels killed 26 people in November 2009. The respected daily said the group of North Caucasus-based militants had already prepared a fertilizer bomb and were in the closing stages of their operation when they were arrested by Federal Security Service (FSB) agents. FSB chief Alexander Bortnikov on July 18 reported to President Dmitry Medvedev that his service had averted...

A Russian colonel who was jailed for murdering a Chechen teenager has been shot dead in central Moscow.Yuri Budanov was killed on Friday by an unidentified gunman on Komsomolsky Prospekt, a busy avenue in the capital, state prosecutors said. In 2003 a court upheld his 10-year jail sentence for strangling an 18-year-old girl in war-torn Chechnya in 2000. But he was released early from jail in January 2009 - a move that angered human rights activists. Russian media say the gunman, wearing a blue jacket and hood, attacked Budanov at about 1230 (0830 GMT), shooting him six times with a...

Russian security forces in Chechnya killed a Saudi militant who was the top envoy of Al-Qaeda in the Northern Caucasus and responsible for deadly attacks, the national anti-terror committee said Friday. The militant -- known by the nom-de-guerre of Moganned -- was one of three rebels killed in a clash with Russian security forces around the village of Serzhen-Yurt in Chechnya on Thursday afternoon, it said. "One of the eliminated bandits has been identified as the main emissary of the international terrorist organisation Al-Qaeda in the Northern Caucasus, a citizen of Saudi Arabia by the name of Moganned," the committee...

A recent report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), entitled ‘You Dress According To Their Rules’, should highlight the growing need for policymakers in Moscow to counter the increasing entrenchment of Shari’a in Chechen society. HRW’s analysis documents extensively the enforcement of Islamic law vis-à-vis women’s rights in Chechnya, as part of Chechen President Ramzan Akhmadovich Kadyrov’s ‘Campaign for Female Virtue’. In fact, Kadyrov, who was first appointed president of the Chechen Republic by the Kremlin in February 2007, has never disguised his advocacy for Shari’a. Soon after becoming president, he defended polygamy as part of Chechen tradition, and in 2009,...

MOSCOW, Feb 24 (Reuters) - The leader of Russia's Muslim Chechnya region, Ramzan Kadyrov, said on Thursday he is looking for a second wife in addition to his present marriage, weighing into controversy on the place of Islamic customs in the region. "I am currently looking, but I just cannot find a beautiful one. If I do, I will immediately get married," the Kremlin-backed Kadyrov told popular daily Komsomolskaya Pravda in an interview. The Kremlin credits Kadyrov with maintaining a shaky peace in Chechnya, theatre of two separatist wars since 1994, and relies on him to keep insurgents in check...

Those responsible for the large-scale terrorist attack are named in a new criminal case The Moscow prosecutor’s office has canceled the order that terminated the criminal case concerning the terrorist attack on Dubrovka, which took place in October 2002. Igor Trunov, the attorney representing the victims’ interest, revealed this to ‘Svobodnaya Pressa’ (‘SP’). According to Trunov, the Moscow prosecutor’s office was instructed by the chief of the Russian Investigative Committee to carry out a supplementary investigation into the incident. Igor Trunov explains why prosecutors are once again investigating‘Nord-Ost’ ‘SP’: Igor Leonidovich (Trunov), the prosecutor’s decision to continue the investigation, what...

The word ‘terror’ in Latin means ‘fear’ and ‘horror’. The word ‘terrorism’ is derived from it, and must be understood as a means of inducing fear. Mass murder does not always strike fear into everyone. The elimination of six million Jews did not. Neither did the destruction of two million Africans in Darfur, nor the deportation of hundreds of thousands from the Caucasus. These acts struck fear into no one other than the doomed. All that reigned was indifference. Terrorism, however, scares everyone, and while I of course condemn terrorism, I believe it is time to figure out why fear...

EXCLUSIVE Thursday, February 3rd, 2011 16:22 Life News has learned the name of the Domodedovo bomber Investigators were only able to identify the suicide bomber from fingerprints and a DNA analysis of his remains. Official representative of the Investigative Committee Vladimir Markin neither confirms nor denies the information. 36 human lives are on Magomed Yevloyev’s conscience. He was a student from Ingushetia who came under the influence of recruiters of the North Caucasus criminal underground. A hand and a scorched head are all that remain of the 20-year resident of the village of Ali-Yurt after he blew himself up in...

24-year-old Zeynap Suyunova, arrested in Volgograd and suspected of involvement in an explosion at a Moscow shooting club on December 31st, confessed to security services that her accomplices were planning two terrorist attacks in the capital - one of them at the airport, reports Life News. There is no official confirmation of this information. A day earlier the National Antiterrorism Committee would only state that interrogation of suspects in the shooting club blast had prevented of two terrorist attacks in Dagestan. According to the official version, the planned New Year’s Eve bombing in the capital and the attack on Domodedovo...

In spite of regularly occurring acts of terrorism around the world, a normal person cannot get used to these cruel acts of violence against entirely innocent persons, people whose only ‘guilt’ is that they are have a different nationality, religion, or political view. Each terrorist attack that results in human casualties is therefore perceived by the vast majority of people around the world as a personal tragedy, regardless of the country where the crime takes place, especially since the victims of such attacks are increasingly citizens of different countries. The bombing at Domodedovo airport on January 24th, and the resulting...

During yesterday’s news conference, Vladimir Putin made a statement that is unprecedented in its inadequacy, and forces me - as the citizen of a belligerent country - to take an unprecedented step. What follows is almost the entire text of an article I published about seven years ago, a few days after a terrorist bombing in Moscow. It quite lucidly describes the nature of the enemy that had thrown down the gauntlet in challenge to Russia back then. An adequate understanding of its nature is absolutely necessary for the political and military leader of our nation, which is what Mr....

Six days after Putin's puppet President Medvedev made his first-ever visit to and repledged Russia's support for a new jihadi cancer to be implanted in Israel, Abbas' fellow koranimals from Chechnya blew up the airport outside of Moscow, killing 35 and wounding over 150. Along with our condolences, and the "surprise... you reap what you sow" factor, astute readers will note that Al-Reuters had an interesting little tidbit in their "reporting":Islamist rebels [ah, how nice, Al Reuters calls them rebels....] have vowed to take their bombing campaign from the North Caucasus to the Russian heartland in the year before presidential...

MOSCOW (AP) - A Muslim cleric formerly held at Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba said Tuesday U.S. guards there regularly desecrated the Qur'an by putting it into a toilet, although he added he never witnessed it himself. Airat Vakhitov, who described himself as a former imam of a mosque in Tatarstan, a majority Muslim republic in southern Russia, is one of seven men released from Guantanamo in 2004 and returned to Russia. He and the six others were held in Russia for three months, then released a year ago. Vakhitov said at a news conference organized by the state RIA-Novosti...

As more neo-Soviet horrors are revealed to the public, it's time to call U.S. policy towards Russia its proper name: appeasement. The Russian tinderbox known as Chechnya is smoldering once again, indicating a complete policy breakdown on the part of the Kremlin that has wide and deep repercussions for the outside world — including a greatly increased risk of terrorism at the 2014 Olympic Games. If the Obama administration does not act soon, it may have blood on its hands. Current events coming out of the region look like a public relations nightmare for the Kremlin. First came the renewed...

"In justifying Budanov, we automatically recognize Chechnya as an independent state" An unpublished interview with Attorney Markelov We are printing a hitherto unknown interview with Stanislav Markelov, taken after he had returned from Chechnya in the early part of June 2002. Back then 'Stas' had become an attorney for the Kungayevs, the Chechen family accusing Colonel Budanov of abducting, raping, and murdering their daughter, 18 year-old Elsa Kungayeva. This is the first time that this interview, taken six and a half years ago, has been published. At the invitation of human rights groups 'Memorial', 'Civic Assistance', and others, in the...

Tuesday's raids were the result of an investigation that has been underway for over a year. Investigators in Spain, Morocco and Saudi Arabia have all been on the case. It is believed that terrorists were planning an attack in Belgium, though the precise target had not yet been decided. Most of those detained, all in their twenties, were staying in the northern port city of Antwerp. Police believe that it is a group of international jihadist fighters that were planning the attack in Belgium. The suspects have been linked to the extremist website Ansar Al Mujahedeen that was used to...

GROZNY, Russia -Islamic insurgents attacked Chechnya's parliament Tuesday in a brazen suicide raid that left six people dead and 17 wounded, defying Kremlin claims of stability in the volatile southern region. In a clear challenge to Moscow, the raid occurred just as Russia's interior minister was visiting the provincial capital of Grozny. The three attackers drove to the tightly guarded parliament complex and got inside. One militant blew himself up at the doors and another two ran into the building shouting "Allahu akbar!" — "God is great!" in Arabic — as they opened fire on the people inside, said Chechen...

GROZNY, Russia – Islamic insurgents attacked Chechnya's parliament Tuesday in a brazen suicide raid that left six people dead and 17 wounded, defying Kremlin claims of stability in the volatile southern region.

At least two other gunmen ran into the building shouting "Allahu Akbar" as they opened fire on the people inside, Bekkhoyev said. The attackers were killed in an ensuing gunfight with police, said Chechen presidential spokesman Alvi Kerimov.

Reports are coming out of Grozny today of an early-morning terrorist attack on the Chechen Parliament building sure to be attributed to Muslim separatists as the Moscow-loyal government tries to keep an uneasy peace. After the medieval savagery of the Breslan school massacre, best expect anything from them... As is their style, the Russian Interior Ministry reports all terrorists "eliminated"- Police in Russia’s Chechnya have killed all the terrorists who attacked the republic’s parliament on Tuesday morning, an Interior Ministry official said. The deputy head of the republic’s Interior Ministry, Roman Edilov, said four militants and two police officers...

The authorities in Russia's southern republic of Chechnya say they are taking unprecedented steps to stop women from being kidnapped and forced into marriage. Lucy Ash, who recently made a film for the BBC about the centuries-old practice of bride-stealing, asks how effective these new measures will be. Surfing the web two years ago, I stumbled across some shocking footage. The pictures, shot on mobile phones, showed young Chechen women being snatched off the street by burly men in leather jackets and pushed into cars. At first these films, set to romantic pop music, looked almost comic. But then I...

MOSCOW — More than 400 police officers and other law enforcement agents have been killed by militants over the past five years in just one of Russia's restive southern provinces, its leader says. Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, the president of the province of Ingushetia west of Chechnya, said at a rally Saturday that more than 3,000 civilians have been wounded in attacks by militants in the region over the same period, a statement on his administration's official website said Sunday. Yevkurov himself was badly wounded by a suicide bombing of his convoy in June 2009. Ingushetia and other provinces in Russia's restive...

Private Rodionov was killed by Chechen militants, when kept a prisoner in Chechnya, on May, 23rd, 1996. He was decapitated for refusal to take off the underwear cross he was wearing and accept Islam. "The monument depicts a bronze candle with its flame embracing a soldier who is holding a cross", - the report reads. The monument will be unveiled near the school, where Evgeny Rodionov studied.

The Russian republic of Tatarstan once boasted the largest mosque in Europe, the Kul-Sharif -- a lavish stone and marble edifice unveiled five years ago in the regional capital of Kazan. Tatarstan also used to be run by Russia's most powerful Muslim regional leader and hosted the only Islam-themed international film festival in the country. All this changed with the advent of Ramzan Kadyrov as Chechen president. Since his appointment by the Kremlin in 2007, Kadyrov has aggressively sought to present Chechnya as Russia's new up-and-coming Muslim region. "Chechnya is now actively positioning itself not only as a relatively autonomous...

A bombing suspect who is accused of blowing up a hotel toilet in Copenhagen, along with himself, is a one-legged amateur boxer who was born in insurgency-racked Chechnya and has shown what one scholar calls "highly professional" tradecraft in concealing his identity and purpose from Danish authorities. The would-be bomber's target, Danish police said, was likely the Jyllands-Posten newspaper, which sparked outrage throughout the Muslim world in 2006 by publishing 12 cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad and has been the object of at least one foiled terrorist attack since. "We are reasonably sure that was the target," Chief Superintendent Svend...

Copenhagen - Police in Denmark arrested a suspected possible suicide bomber Friday following a small explosion at a hotel in central Copenhagen, media reports said. Danish daily Extra Bladet showed on its website a photo of the suspect, who had reportedly attempted to blow himself up. Police did not immediately confirm the report. No one was injured in the explosion at the Jorgensen Hotel. Police handcuffed the man after he was seen running away from the hotel and into the nearby Orstedsparken park. The park was evacuated and the surrounding streets were cordoned off as explosive experts were called in....

01 September 2010 "MOM, I'M IN JAIL." SNIPPET: "The administrator of the Ansar al-Mujahideen forum (Arabic), Faical Errai, has been arrested in Spain."

Many women in Russia's volatile Chechnya region said on Friday they had been harassed and some physically harmed by bands of men for not wearing head scarves during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. Against the backdrop of a spreading Islamist insurgency, many fear that growing interest in radical Islam could fuel separatism in the volatile North Caucasus, where the Kremlin watches uneasily as sharia law eclipses Russian. Residents and witnesses told Reuters that bearded men in traditional Islamic dress have been roaming the streets both on foot and in cars since Ramadan started on Aug. 11, demanding bare-headed women...

Aset Magomadova placed on probation for three years. The Calgary mother who killed her teenage daughter by strangling her with a scarf more than three years ago will not have to spend a day in jail, a judge ruled on Thursday. Court of Queen's Bench Justice Sal LoVecchio... deemed she did not intend to kill her, even though such an act required at least 2 1/2 minutes of continuous strangulation to cause death... Magomadova, 40, a refugee from the wartorn country of Chechnya, was originally charged with second-degree murder for killing her daughter Aminat...

Russian security forces dealt a double blow to the al Qaeda-linked Caucasus Emirate during operations in the southern Russian republics late last week. Emir Magas, the military commander of the Caucasus Emirate, was captured and Yasir Amarat, a wanted terrorist commander from Jordan, was killed during raids by Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB. On June 9, the FSB captured Emir Magas, whose real name is Ali Taziyev, during a raid in the village of Malgobek in the Republic of Ingushetia. Kavkaz Center, a jihadist website that supports the Caucasus Emirate, confirmed Magas' capture and noted his importance. Magas has...

IPT News June 9, 2010 SNIPPET: "The Turkish-based charity that helped drive last week's deadly confrontation with Israeli commandos has deep ties to Hamas and other terrorist groups. The Hamas ties are not in question. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and IHH officials simply do not acknowledge that Hamas is a terrorist group." SNIPPET: "U.S. officials have expressed concern over the fact that "IHH representatives have met with senior Hamas officials in Turkey, Syria, and Gaza over the past three years," but IHH is not a designated terrorist organization in the United States. It's fair to ask, why not?"...

Note: The following text is a quote: Westchester Man Sentenced to 121 Months in Prison in Manhattan Federal Court for Attempting to Finance Terrorism and Perpetrating Massive Investment Fraud PREET BHARARA, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that ABDUL TAWALA IBN ALI ALISHTARI was sentenced today in Manhattan federal court to 121 months in prison after previously pleading guilty to charges of terrorism financing and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The sentence was imposed by United States District Judge ALVIN K. HELLERSTEIN. According to the Information to which ALISHTARI pleaded guilty, other publicly filed...

Easter fell on the same days for both the Eastern and Western branches of the Christian Church this year, which occurs according to the Julian and Gregorian calendar. And on the day following Palm Sunday, a normal business day, the terrorists struck. As a long-time observer of the Russian scene, I could empathize with Muscovites when, on that fateful Monday, the transport system that is almost a cultural icon in itself – the Metro – was attacked by suicide bombers, who killed 39 people. In the days of the old Soviet Union, this type of news would have been suppressed...

The March 29, 2010, martyr-bombings in the two Moscow Metro stations served as a reminder of the escalating and evolving jihadist surge into Russia’s soft underbelly. The bombing took place at peak rush hour. The first martyr-bomber detonated herself at 7:56am in the Lubyanka station which serves the Kremlin’s bureaucracy. The second martyr-bomber detonated herself at 8:37am in the Park Kulturi station, a connection and transfer station from the Ring Line leading to Moscow’s center. Both martyr-bombers detonated themselves inside train cars just as the doors were opened to let passengers in and out. At the time of writing, the...

MOSCOW, Russia – The two mysterious young widows who brought terror to Moscow by targeting its famed subway system might have been motivated by a forest massacre in which garlic-picking villagers were slain by government forces. Both suicide bombers — one 17, another reportedly 20 — were from Russia's predominantly Muslim North Caucasus region, home to a fierce Islamic insurgency that has been fueled by frequent killings, kidnappings and torture of residents by government forces.

"The trajectory of Chechnya’s suicide campaign reveals a stark pattern: 27 attacks from June 2000 to November 2004, no attacks until October 2007, and 18 since. What explains the three-year pause? The answer is loss of public support in Chechnya for the rebellion, for two reasons. The first was revulsion against the 2004 Beslan school massacre in which Chechen rebels murdered hundreds of Russian children. “A bigger blow could not have been dealt on us,” one of the separatists’ spokesmen said at the time. “People around the world will think that Chechens are beasts and monsters if they could attack...

At least 25 people are reported to have been killed in an explosion on the Metro system in central Moscow, with a second blast coming shortly afterwards. The first blast happened at the city's central Lubyanka station, reports quoting security sources said. A second explosion happened at the Park Kultury station, Russian news agency Tass reported. Ten people were injured in the first blast, Tass said, quoting the emergencies ministry. The number of casualties at the second blast is not yet clear.

Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov has decided to celebrate the Prophet Muhammad's birthday next year at an international level, with the heads of a number of Islamic states invited, Ziyad Sabsabi, a Russian Federation Council member representing Chechnya, told journalists. Speaking on behalf of Kadyrov, Sabsabi also invited all the members of a delegation of Islamic countries participating in celebrations of the Prophet Muhammad's birthday to come to Chechnya next year. The delegation members praised positive changes that have occurred in Chechnya in a brief period of time. A plane carrying the members of the delegation of Islamic counties has left...

Chechnya is to market itself as "a Swiss-style" ski resort in an improbable bid to attract Russian and foreign tourists. If the plan succeeds, it will be one of the most radical makeovers in the history of global tourism. The southern Russian republic is better known for suicide bombings, kidnappings and two brutal wars than for apres ski parties and designers ski wear. Ramzan Kadyrov, the former warlord turned Kremlin-backed president of the troubled region, believes the small mountainous republic has huge tourism potential. "We have a good climate and wonderful scenery," he said. "We have places that when equipped...

NEW YORK (AP) - An FBI informant who was set to be the star prosecution witness in a terror trial until he set himself ablaze outside the White House took the stand for the defense Thursday, saying he had sought $5 million for leading prosecutors to a Yemeni sheik he says gave Osama bin Laden money, arms and fighters. "I deserve that," Mohamed Alanssi said through an Arabic-English interpreter. "After I chase the terrorist and I bring him here to America I deserve even $10 million." Alanssi quickly laid out some of the government's most serious allegations against Sheik Mohammed...

Transcript: "FRENCH JOURNALIST: Don't you think that by trying to eradicate terrorism in Chechnya you are going to eradicate the civilian population of Chechnya? VLADIMIR PUTIN: If you want to become an Islamic fundamentalist and be circumcised, come to Moscow. We are multiconfessional. We have very good specialists. I can recommend one for the operation. He'll make sure nothing grows back." Blog comment: It is frightening to think how much Putin must dominate Obama in private negotiations. And what must Putin think about Americans reading Miranda rights to apprehended terrorists?

At a g8 summit, French journalist asked Vladimir Putin a really stupid question, followed by shocking reply from Putin and leaving everyone on the panel and in the building dead silent. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-S1ZfjZmjgA

Living With Osama bin Laden: First Wife Tells of Husband's Bid To Train His Sons As Suicide Bombers Daily Mail Reporter 12th October 2009 Osama bin Laden was a tyrant who trained his own children to be suicide bombers and murdered their pets, his first wife has revealed. In a new book about her time living with bin Laden, Najwa Ghanem has told how she gave birth to 11 of his 14 children because bin Laden said that Islam needed many warriors. And millionaire bin Laden would not allow any modern appliances in his home, even refusing his son medicine...

Young Female Islamist Denial By: Joe Kaufman FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, July 10, 2009   Earlier this year, I wrote of a young female leader from the Muslim American Society (MAS), Mashal Azhar, and of the e-mails that she had sent me. She was upset at my group’s slogan, “Fighting Hate with Truth.” She had believed it was dishonest. She was mistaken. In the course of our correspondence, Azhar was unusually candid in describing her and her group’s goal of creating a new America and bringing her brand of Islam to the masses. Recently, I had the opportunity to communicate with...