Salman Raduyev

Salman Raduyev (or Raduev; Салма́н Раду́ев; February 13, 1967 – December 14, 2002) was a Chechen separatist warlord considered to be one of the most radical and notorious rebel commanders of the period between 1994 and 1999. Arrested in 2000, he died in a Russian penal colony under mysterious circumstances.

Early life
Raduyev was born in 1967 into the Gordaloy teip (clan) in Novogroznensky near Gudermes in eastern Chechnya. During the early 1980s Raduyev was active in the communist youth league Komsomol of which he eventually became a leader for the whole Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. After attending a high school in Gudermes, Raduyev served 1985-1987 in the Soviet Army as a construction engineer in a Strategic Rocket Forces unit stationed in the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, where he became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. After demobilization, he studied economy and worked in Soviet construction industry.

After Chechnya declared independence, he was appointed the prefect of Gudermes in June 1992 by his father-in-law, Dzhokhar Dudayev, who was the president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. He also married the daughter of Dudayev's cousin.

Field commander
During the First Chechen War Raduyev became a field commander for the separatist Chechen forces. He fought in the battle of Grozny and was wounded in March 1995 during an attempt to capture him by the Russian special forces. In October 1995, he became one of the most important of the Chechen field commanders, commanding the 6th Brigade based in the strategically important Gudermessky District and responsible for the Gudermessky, part of the capital Grozny and the town of Argun. On December 14, 1995, Raduyev, along with Sultan Geliskhanov, led a raid on the city of Gudermes.

On January 9, 1996, Raduyev, allegedly copying Shamil Basayev's 1995 Budyonnovsk attack, led a large-scale Kizlyar hostage taking raid into neighbouring Russian region of Dagestan, where his men took hostage at least 2,000 civilians. The raid, which made Raduyev world-famous, escalated into the all-out battle and ended with the complete destruction of the border village of Pervomayskoye, and other Chechen leaders criticised Raduyev. In March 1996, he was shot in the head and incorrectly reported dead; Russian special forces claimed to have "killed" him in revenge for the Kizlyar attack, while the other sources said he was shot in a Chechen feud. On March 7, 63 out of 101 deputies of the Parliament of Estonia sent condolences to Dudayev expressing "deep sympathy with the Chechen people" on "the loss of commander Raduyev," sparking a rove with the Russian Duma. In fact, Raduyev just disappeared as he went for medical treatment abroad.

Warlord
In the summer of 1996, Raduyev returned to the republic and refused the orders of the Chechnya's acting president Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev to stop carrying out terrorist operations (he claimed ordering bombings of trolleybuses in Moscow and train stations in Armavir and Pyatigorsk), despite the ceasefire and talks that would lead up to the Khasav-Yurt Accord. He even accused Yandarbiyev of treason for agreeing to ceasfire and threatened to attack him. Raduyev, his face deformed by injury and now hidden behind bushy red beard and black sunglasses, was the only field commander to announce openly that the "war without rules" with Russia would continue even despite the signing of the peace agreement.

In 1997, the newly elected Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov stripped Raduyev from the rank of brigadier general to private. However, further action was blocked by a public opposition from a Raduyev-led war veterans, including a prolonged rally in Grozny. This rally ended in a shootout resulting in the deaths of both the commander of Raduyev's militia Vakha Dzhafarov and of the Chechen security forces chief Lechi Khultygov. Meanwhile, Raduyev kept claiming responsibility for every explosion in Russia, including even official gas leaks. He claimed that Dudayev, who had died in 1996, has been still alive, and issuing orders to him from "a secret NATO base in Turkey" with the goal of the "liberation" of entire North Caucasus. Raduyev's eccentric behaviour was however not widely popular in Chechnya. Many openly doubted his sanity: in an interview in 1997, Maskhadov described Raduyev as "mentally ill"; even Basayev, who has been Raduyev's ally in the opposition against Maskhadov, reportedly called him "crazy". In October 1997, Raduyev was again severely injured by a car bomb which killed three other people. Previously, he survived at least two other assassination attempts, in April and July 1997.

In May 1998, the Chechnya's Islamic court sentenced Raduyev in absence to four years in prison for allegedly attempting to overthrow Maskhadov, but made no attempt to arrest him. In September 1998, Raduyev announced a "temporary moratorium" on acts of terrorism. As a sign of his good gesture towards Russia, Raduyev claimed that it was he who freed the nine kidnapped Russian servicemen from their captors. He also became conflicted with the Islamist circles and called to ban "Wahhabism" in Chechnya. In January 1999, he backed the republic's parliament in its conflict with the Sharia Court. His private army-style militia, some 1,000-strong and called "General Dudayev's Army", was reportedly involved in several train robberies.

In early 1999, Raduyev vanished from public again while undergoing a major plastic surgery operation in Germany, in effect acquiring a new face. The alleged implants of titanium earned him the nickname of "Titanic" in Russia, while in Chechnya he became popularly known as "Michael Jackson", a reference to his plastic surgery. Still seriously ill and recovering from surgery, Raduyev had vowed "reprisals" against Russia for the March 1999 sentencing of two Chechen women. In September 1999, at the start of the Second Chechen War, Raduyev organized a rally in Grozny attended by 12,000 people where he urged residents to stay home and prepare to defend the city. His militia was reported to be virtually destroyed in a series of serious setbacks during the early fighting in the late 1999. He stopped talking about new terrorist attacks that he was going to organize.

Arrest and trial
Raduyev was captured in March 2000 by Russian special operations unit Vympel in his home in Novogroznensky; soon after his arrest he was shown on television clean shaven, after Russian guards had forcefully shaven his beard. The Russian president Vladimir Putin said that Raduyev had confessed to trying to assassinate Eduard Shevardnadze, the president of Georgia.

Raduyev was tried on 18 different charges, including terrorism, banditry, hostage-taking, organization of murders and organization of illegal armed formations. He pleaded not guilty, maintained he was only following orders, claimed to suffer from no mental disorders whatsoever and said he hopes to be released from prison in some 10–12 years. Dozens of witnesses were called to testify, but many of the alleged victims of his actions had refused to participate. In December 2001, he was sentenced to life in prison. His appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation in April 2002.

Death
In December 2002, Raduyev died in the White Swan penal colony in Solikamsk from internal bleeding. The Russian authorities said he was not beaten to death, but died due to a "serious and protracted diseases". Raduyev's body was not returned to his family because of a newly introduced Russian law barring the release of bodies of people convicted (or accused) of terrorism.

The circumstances surrounding the death of Raduyev are not clear and according to his family and the separatists he was murdered in prison after he refused to talk about the accusations against Akhmed Zakayev, then arrested in Denmark. Kommersant daily said that "the real reason for Raduev's death will probably never be known," while Vremya Novostei suggested that, after being forced to give all the information requested from him, he was therefore "no longer needed" by the Russian authorities and killed. Amnesty International has called for a full investigation into the circumstances surrounding his death but the request was ignored and his body not exhumed.

Salman Raduyev was survived by his wife and two sons – Johar and Zelimhan, living abroad.