Akhmed Zakayev is one of the leaders of the self-proclaimed Chechen Republic. In different years, he received high posts in it - the Minister of Culture, Foreign Affairs and the Deputy Prime Minister. With the outbreak of the Second Chechen War, he turned into a field commander under illegal terrorist groups in Ichkeria. In 2007, he was declared prime minister of a defunct republic in exile. Currently hiding abroad, he is wanted by the Federal Security Service in Russia.
Education
Akhmed Zakayev was born in 1959 in the village of Kirovskoye on the territory of the Kazakh SSR. His family was forcibly evicted there at the end of World War II. A few years after his birth, parents were able to return to their native village of Urus-Martan, so that the child’s childhood passed in Chechnya. By nationality, Akhmed Zakayev is a Chechen.
After graduation, he entered the choreographic department of the cultural enlightenment school in Grozny. Later, Akhmed Zakayev received a graduate diploma from the Voronezh State Institute of Arts.
He began his career in 1981 as an actor in a drama theater in the Chechen capital. He worked in the main troupe until 1990. According to political scientist Ruslan Saidov, who was interested in the biography of Akhmed Zakayev, at that time the man was recruited by the KGB as an agent, and later continued to work for the FSB of Russia. There is no reliable information confirming this information.
In 1991, Akhmed Zakayev became the head of the Union of Theater Workers of the Republic, at the same time enters the Union of Theater Workers of the whole country. In connection with these posts, most of the time before the start of the active phase of the conflict in Chechnya is spent in Moscow.
Finally, he returned to his native republic only in 1994, when Dzhokhar Dudaev offered him the post of Minister of Culture.
Armed conflict
When in December 1994, federal troops entered the republic, Zakayev was among the militia of Ichkeria. Already at the end of 1994, he led the headquarters of the Southwestern Front.
In particular, it is known that the hero of our article participated in the battle near the village of Goiskoye in April 1995, for which he was awarded the highest order of the self-proclaimed republic of Ichkeria. At the same time, opponents of Zakayev noted that his role in that battle, as in the entire Chechen war, was nominal.
In 1995, Akhmed Zakayev, whose biography is presented in this article, was awarded the rank of brigadier general, he headed the Urus-Martan Front. In the summer of 1996, he participated in the operation to seize the Chechen capital along with other field commanders.
After the war
After the end of the First Chechen War was officially announced, he was an assistant to President Zelimkhan Yandarbiev, overseeing national security issues, and was also the secretary of security for Chechnya. Directly participated in negotiations on a peaceful settlement of the crisis, as well as in the preparation of the Khasavyurt agreements. It was they who put an end to the First Chechen War. In fact, they expired in September 1999.
In October 1996, Zakayev returned to the post of Minister of Culture of the Chechen Republic, and in January next year he decided to run for president of Ichkeria. However, the representative of the National Independence Party, Aslan Maskhadov, becomes the winner in the elections.
In 1998, Zakayev’s biography began to change significantly when he was appointed deputy prime minister in the government of Ichkeria. He remains in this post until 2006, when he is dismissed by the new president Abdul-Halim Sadulayev. A few months later, Zakayev received the post of head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, replacing Usman Ferzauli at this post. For some time, he headed the Chechenpress news agency.
Second war
During the Second Chechen War, Zakayev became the commander of the so-called "special forces brigade", which is considered a personal reserve of the Chechen President Maskhadov.
In August 2000, Zakayev was involved in a traffic accident in the south-west of the Chechen Republic. For him, the accident turns around without serious consequences, Zakayev receives minor damage, but leaves the republic to undergo treatment.
In mid-2004, Maskhadov appointed him Minister of Culture. Thus, in the reformed government of Chechnya, Zakayev oversees the press and information issues.
Diplomatic work
At the end of 2000, he began to actively engage in diplomatic work. In November, he was appointed Special Representative of the President of Chechnya in Turkey, as well as in other states in the Middle East. In 2001, he became the official representative of Maskhadov in the West.
In September of the same year, Zakayev was put on the federal wanted list by a decision of the General Prosecutor of the Russian Federation. In October, he was put on the international wanted list. He was accused of organizing an illegal armed group, armed rebellion, as well as an encroachment on the lives of law enforcement officials.
In November 2001, Zakayev met in the international zone of the Sheremetyevo with the plenipotentiary of the head of state in the Southern Federal District, whose name was Viktor Kazantsev. As it turned out later, these negotiations did not bring any results, since neither side began to put forward compromise proposals.
After that, Zakayev repeatedly attempted a diplomatic settlement of the conflict. In particular, in the summer of 2002, he participated in informal negotiations with a number of influential Russian politicians. Among them were named Ivan Rybkin, Ruslan Khasbulatov, Aslambek Aslakhanov, Yuri Shchekochikhin. The meeting took place in Liechtenstein, according to preliminary information, their organization was funded by the government of this country. And their direct organizers were the American diplomat Alexander Haig and the ex-adviser to the US president on national security Zbigniew Brzezinski, who held this post in the late 1970s.
In particular, during these negotiations, Maskhadov’s supporters, whose interests were represented by Akhmed Khalidovich Zakayev, were asked to release 29 captured Russian soldiers who were in the hands of Chechen fighters as a goodwill gesture.
Some details of these negotiations are known. In particular, one of the representatives of the Russian side asked Zakayev why Maskhadov was ordering the killings of Chechens who work in the police and the executive system. Indeed, this, according to the negotiator who asked the question, only leads to an aggravation of the situation in the republic, since the blood feud common among mountain peoples can last a very long time.
In response to all these proposals, Zakayev stated that the Chechen government does not plan any goodwill gestures, the prisoners will remain hostages. Regarding the killings of civil servants and police officers of Chechen origin, he emphasized that these actions will continue, as they are considered "national traitors" who serve the Kadyrov regime. In this case, the father of the current head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, Akhmat, was meant. At that time, he was the president of Chechnya, supported by the federal government. A year and a half later, he was killed in a terrorist attack in Grozny on May 9 at the Dynamo stadium during a concert on the occasion of Victory Day. According to official figures, the explosion killed seven people, more than 50 were injured.
Based on the results of the negotiations, the parties nevertheless managed to draw up a peace plan for the settlement of the Chechen conflict, known as the "Liechtenstein Plan". According to him, Chechnya should have been granted broad autonomous powers within the Russian Federation, right up to the conduct of its own foreign policy. The guarantors of security in this case were the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the United Nations.
The next meeting was supposed to take place in Switzerland, but further negotiations were frustrated due to the terrorist attack on Dubrovka, when Chechen terrorists took 916 hostages in the theater building. The militants demanded the withdrawal of troops from Chechnya. As a result of the assault and special operations to release 130 hostages were killed (according to official figures). According to the public organization Nord-Ost, which began to help victims of the terrorist attack, 174 people became victims. More than seven hundred were injured.
Copenhagen Arrest
After being put on the international wanted list, Zakayev’s photo began to appear regularly in the media, operational reports. He started hiding abroad.
In October 2002, the World Chechen Congress was held in the Danish capital Copenhagen, one of the organizers of which was Zakayev. Russia expressed a strong protest, saying that the organization of this meeting was most directly related to the terrorists, as well as their patrons and accomplices from al-Qaeda. According to Moscow, international terrorists who are behind the terrorist attack on Dubrovka are financing this congress.
The head of the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Per Stig Meller, in response to this statement noted that the Danish authorities are ready to immediately take all necessary measures to apprehend the terrorists if the Russian side gives the specific names of the suspects, as well as provide evidence of their direct involvement in the terrorist attack.
On October 25, the Russian authorities sent a request to detain Zakayev, five days later he was detained, immediately after the end of the work of the congress. Russia called Zakayev guilty of involvement in the organization of terrorist attacks in Russia in 1996-1999, as well as in the terrorist attack on Dubrovka.
On October 31, Denmark received an official request from the Russian authorities to extradite Zakayev. But the very next day, the Ministry of Justice of this Scandinavian country refused officially, justifying it with the fact that there was no convincing evidence of involvement in the terrorist activities of Akhmed Zakayev himself, whose photo is given in this article. The head of the Danish Ministry of Justice, Lene Jespersen, refused to extradite the leader of the self-proclaimed republic of Moscow. She noted that the request for extradition was unacceptable due to the large number of omissions in the documents. She emphasized that the Russian authorities must provide additional information by November 30, otherwise Zakayev will be released.
On November 5, the General Prosecutor's Office transferred additional materials of the criminal case instituted in Russia. Based on them, it was concluded that after the coming to power of Dzhokhar Dudaev, Zakayev created an armed gang, which was referred to as the "South-Western Front." Under his leadership, a number of crimes were committed:
- in 1995 - the seizure of two prosecutors in the Urus-Martan district, the seizure of several administrative buildings in Urus-Martan, the terrorization of local residents, the execution of about a dozen people.
- in 1996 - the shooting of two priests, the seizure of a district hospital in the Zavodskoy district of Grozny and the shooting of more than 10 commandant’s staff, the seizure of a railway station in the Chechen capital. During the last rally, about 300 police officers guarding the building were killed and injured.
- Zakayev’s gang was also accused of a number of crimes and terrorist acts, in which civilians, including pregnant women, were killed.
According to the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office, a prison was equipped in the house of the suspect himself, in which wounded soldiers and law enforcement officers were kept, as well as their bodies. Bandits sold the wounded and killed to their relatives.
However, this time the Danish side found the evidence provided insufficient to extradite Zakayev. The Scandinavians noted that the documents were drawn up carelessly, with a large number of errors and shortcomings, for example, Zakayev's year of birth and his middle name were incorrectly indicated. Moreover, one of the priests, who, according to the statement of the Russian side was killed by terrorists, turned out to be alive.
The Danish authorities have repeatedly sent a request in order to obtain more reliable and irrefutable evidence, twice extending Zakayev’s detention. On December 3, a final decision was made to refuse extradition. The next day he was released, he immediately flew to London.
UK Detention
By that time, the arrest warrant issued by the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office continued to operate. Therefore, at London's Zakayev Airport, whose biography is given in this article, he was immediately arrested. Well-known people stood up for him, as a result he was released on bail of £ 50, 000, which was contributed by Boris Berezovsky and actress Vanessa Redgrave.
The Russian side sent a request for his extradition to England, accusing Zakayev of 11 articles of the Criminal Code.
The process began in June 2003. In November, a verdict was passed. All charges related to the killing of servicemen were dismissed, the court noted that they had been committed in the course of hostilities, and therefore could not be grounds for extradition.
The judge further stated that procedural abuse had been committed on the Russian side. Moreover, the court suggested that torture and biased trial could be expected of Zakayev. As a result, his extradition was refused.
Personal life
Not much is known about the family of Akhmed Zakayev. He has a wife, Rose, with whom he repeatedly appeared at public events. He also has two brothers and sisters. These are Buvadi, Ali, Hajia and Laila.
Personality of Zakayev
Assessing him as a politician, many experts note that during the First Chechen War he enjoyed great authority in the republic. Giving characteristics to Akhmed Zakayev, many journalists, including Anna Politkovskaya, who knew him well, emphasized that he was one of the last representatives in the Chechen leadership who advocated moderate, not radical measures.
Detention in Poland
Akhmed Zakayev has recently disappeared from the information field. He was actively talked about in September 2010, when he was detained in Poland. The World Chechen Congress was held there. The interrogation of the odious Chechen leader took six hours, after which the prosecutor's office issued an arrest warrant. A few hours later, a Warsaw court released Zakayev.
