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BASAYEV SHAMIL
Is wanted by the law enforcement agencies of Russia and Georgia.
 Russia's
office of prosecutor general instituted legal proceedings against him on
charges of hostage taking in the city of Budyonovsk. The prosecutor's office
in Stavropol wants him for his having highjacked a TU-154 plane from the
airport of Mineralnye Vody to Turkey. The authorities of Dagestan want
to bring him to trial for staging an incursion into Dagestan in August-September
last year.
He was born in 1965 in the village of Vyshne-Vedeno of Vedeno district
in Chechnya. In 1987 he joined the Moscow-based Institute of Land Tenure
Engineers from where he was expelled in 1988 for poor progress. He engaged
in semi-criminal business in Moscow. Upon his return from Moscow in 1991
he joined the troops of the Confederation of Caucasus Peoples. In October
of 1991 he joined the presidential race in Chechnya which was won by General
Dudayev. On November 9, 1991 he joined those who highjacked a passenger
plane from Mineralnye Vody to Turkey. In Turkey the highjackers surrendered
to the local authorities. After negotiations they were despatched to Chechnya,
in exchange for which the TU-154 plane with its passengers was freed and
sent back to Russia. After his return from Turkey Basayev was appointed
to lead a regiment of Chechnya's Presidential Guard in the rank of colonel.
There is information that in 1991-1992 he fought in Nagorny Karabakh on
the side of Azerbaijan and spent some time in Pakistan at bases for training
Islamic extremists. In August of 1992 he joined military actions in Abkhazia
which waged a war against Georgia. He led a unit of Chechen militants.
He was appointed Abkhazia's deputy defence minister. He was in charge of
the Gagry front. In the autumn of 1993 his battalion destroyed thousands
of civilians in the village of Leselidze and in Sukhumi. In February of
1994 Basayev returned to Chechnya and was appointed commander-in-chief
of the troops belonging to the Confederation of Independent Caucasus. In
April of 1994 he left for Afghanistan to undergo military training for
3 months. In the summer of 1994 he joined the civil war in Chechnya on
the side of Dzhokhar Dudayev. In December of 1994, when the federal forces
were deployed in Chechnya, he became a leading field commander. The separatist
units he led fought independently, obeying neither Dudayev nor Maskhadov.
He was appointed commander of the southern front and then the commander
of all Chechen military units. At the same time he led Chechnya's Customs
Committee, which enabled him to smuggle arms, narcotics, fuel with impunity.
He established control over oil installations in Vedeno, Nozhai-Yurt, Kurchaloy
and Grozny districts in Chechnya. In June of 1995 he launched a terrorist
act, taking hostage patients in the central hospital of the city of Budyonovsk.
His victims were pregnant women and doctors, a total of 1500 people. As
a result 134 civilians, 18 policemen, 18 servicemen were killed. More than
400 people were injured to a varying extent. All in all 1621 persons suffered.
In April of 1996 Basayev attacked a column of federal troops and killed
about 100 servicemen. In 1997 he got in touch with the representatives
of the international terrorist Osama bin Laden. In 1997 he joined another
presidential race in Chechnya which was won by Aslan Maskhadov. In 1998
Maskhadov appointed him Chechnya's first deputy premier and subsequently
acting prime minister. Half a year later he openly opposed Maskhadov and
joined forces with the field commander Hattab, who had been his enemy earlier.
In August of 1999, together with Hattab he led an incursion of Chechen
separatists and Islamists into neighboring Dagestan for the purpose of
establishing an independent Wahhabite state there. The federal troops fought
to liberate Dagestan in August-September last year. They lost 230 servicemen;
another 875 men were wounded.
SALMAN RADUYEV
(Arrested on March 12, 2000)
Salman Raduev was born in 1967 in the town of Novogroznensky outside Gudermes.
After graduation from school he worked as builder for the local trade association.
He received higher education at the Economics Institute in Rostov. In April
of 1989 he began to lead the Center of Labor Associations in Gudermes.
Later he worked for a  foreign-trade
firm. In the early 1990s he held a prominent post in the regional committee
of the Young Communist League. In 1991, when the Soviet Union broke up,
he joined General Dudaev, who had illegally proclaimed independence in
Chechnya. He was able to make a career thanks to his relations with General
Dudaev, having married his cousin's daughter. In June of 1992 he was appointed
prefect of Gudermes district. At that time he formed a separate brigade
of Chechnya's armed forces. In the spring of 1994 the residents of Gudermes
dismissed him. In December of 1994 he became one of those who organized
the anti-Russian terrorist movement in Chechnya. In early 1995 he joined
those who fought in the eastern areas of Chechnya, in Gudermes. In January
of 1996 he led an attack on Kizlyar with a group of 350 militants. He seized
the local hospital and held more than 3000 people hostage. An operation
for freeing the hostages was carried out by the federal forces in the town
of Pervomayskoye, where he had taken them. Civilian and military casualties
made up 65 people. After Dudaev's death, the signing of Khasav-Yurt peace
accords in August of 1996 and Aslan Maskhadov's coming to power Raduev
joined the opposition. He proclaimed the forming of his own forces -"General
Dudaev's Caucasian Liberation Army". In 1997, when Maskhadov won the
presidential elections, he refused to recognize Maskhadov's legitimacy
and subjected the peace treaty with Russia that was being drafted to criticism.
"Allah and General Dudaev alone can order me to stop warfare,"
he said. Russian secret services believe that he prepared a chain of terrorist
acts in Russian cities to mark the anniversary of Dudaev's death. Raduev's
gang committed crimes on railway transport, stole government funds in the
amount of 700,000 rubles sent to pay teachers' wages. Raduev's bandits
demanded contribution from a number of villages in Gudermes district, stole
government property from enterprises, plundered trains that went through
Chechnya. Raduev claimed responsibility for the explosions carried out
at the railway stations of Armavir and Pyatigorsk in 1997 and for the attempt
to kill Georgia's President Eduard Shevardnadze launched in 1998. Officials
from Georgia's Interior Ministry do not rule out that Raduyev was involved
in the terrorist act in Tbilisi: the terrorists who attacked Shevardnadze
had undergone training at a base in Chechnya in 1997. When Raduyev was
arrested on March 13 this year he, as his lawyer Nechiporenko said, was
charged under 18 articles of Russia's Criminal Code, the main charges being
terrorism, banditry, murders, explosions. As for the explosions of apartment
houses in Moscow, Volgodonsk and Buynaksk, Raduyev will be questioned under
those cases as a witness. This is due to the fact that together with the
notorious terrorist Hattab Raduev set up the Urus-Martan center for training
explosion specialists, whose graduates, according to what has been proved,
were involved in those blasts. Raduev himself recruited some terrorists
for the center.
SALAUTDIN TEMIRBULATOV
(Arrested on March 20, 2000)
He was born in 1960 in the town of Urus-Martan. Before Djokhar Dudaev's
coming to power he lived in the village of Borzoy and was a tractor operator.
In the early 1990s he became an active supporter of General Dudaev. When
the general came to  power,
he appointed Temirbulatov to lead the Urus-Martan administration. Later
Temirbulatov formed a band that belonged to the armed unit of Daud Akhmadov
run by Ruslan Gilayev. He is notorious for brutality practiced towards
POWs. He took part in the executions of Russian servicemen. Russian secret
services have a video tape filming the questioning of four servicemen outside
the town of Komsomolskoye on April 12, 1996. Temirbulatov himself shot
two of them and cut the throat of one serviceman. That was only one of
the numerous episodes confirming the extreme sadism of the field commander.
In 1996 Russia's office of prosecutor general charged him with murder and
banditry.
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