Akhmed Zakayev

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Prime Minister of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria
Akhmed Zakayev Ахмед Халидович Закаев
Incumbent
Assumed office November 2007
Deputy Prime Minister of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria
Foreign Minister of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria
In office 1997 – November 20, 2007

Born	26 April 1959 (1959-04-26) (age 49) Kirovskiy, Soviet Union
Profession	Actor
Religion	Islam

Akhmed Khalidovich Zakayev (Russian: Ахмед Халидович Закаев) (born April 26, 1956 in Kazakh SSR, Soviet Union) is the former Deputy Prime Minister and the current Prime Minister of the separatist Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. He was also the Foreign Minister of the Ichkerian government, appointed by the President Aslan Maskhadov shortly after his 1997 election, and again in 2006 by Abdul Halim Sadulayev.

1 Early life
2 Chechen wars
3 In exile
4 References
5 External links
- 5.1 Articles

[edit] Early life

Akhmed Zakayev was born in 1959 in the settlement of Kirovskiy in Kazakhstan, where his family was deported by Stalin in 1944. He graduated from the acting and choreography schools in Voronezh and Moscow and worked as an actor at Grozny theatre, specializing in a Shakespearean roles. Since 1991, he was the chairman of the Chechen Union of the Theatrical Actors.

In 1994, Zakayev became a Minister of Culture in the Chechen government of Dzokhar Dudayev.

[edit] Chechen wars

After the start of the First Chechen War he left his job and and took weapons, taking part in the battle of Grozny in 1994-1995 and leading the defence of the village Goyskoye in the March/April 1995. His group operated in the South West of the country with its headquarters in the town of Urus-Martan; he was promoted to the rank of Brigadier General and appointed the commander of the Urus-Martan Front. Eventually, in February 1996, he became the commander of the whole Western Group of Defense of Ichkeria. In August 1996, Zakayev's forces took part in the Chechen recapture of Grozny, where he led the attack on the city's Central Railway Station (according to the later indictment, this attack killed about 200 Russian Interior Ministry troops).

His war merits in the mid-1990s paved Zakayev's way to Chechen high politics. He became the acting president Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev's advisor for the security matters and the secretary of the Chechen Security Council. As a moderate leader, he represented Chechnya at the peace talks in Khasav-Yurt, which in 1996 brought a peaceful end to the first armed conflict between Moscow and Grozny. After the war, Zakayev became the Chechen Deputy Prime Minister in charge of education and culture and a special envoy of President Aslan Maskhadov in relations with Moscow.

During the early phases of the Second Chechen War in 1999-2000, Zakayev commanded Maskhadov's presidential guard. Zakayev was involved in negotiations with Russian representatives before and during the resumed hostilities. In 2000, after having been wounded in a car accident during another siege of Grozny, he left for abroad and turned into the most prominent representative of President Maskhadov in Western Europe, including France and Switzerland.

[edit] In exile

Since January 2002, Zakayev resides in United Kingdom with his immediate family. On November 18, 2001, Zakayev, already wanted internationally by Russia, flew from Turkey to the Sheremetyevo International Airport near Moscow to meet the Kremlin's envoy, General Viktor Kazantsev, but the talks were fruitless because Kazantsev demanded a complete capitulation of the Chechen side. On July 18, 2002, he met with the former Secretary of Security Council of Russia Ivan Rybkin in Zürich, Switzerland.

Zakayev case

Living in London, Zakayev organized the World Chechen Congress in Copenhagen, Denmark, in October 2002. During the congress, he was accused by Russia of involvement in planning the Moscow theatre siege. He was detained there on October 30, 2002, under an Interpol warrant filed by Russia, which named him a suspect in the theater siege.^[1]^[2] Zakayev denied involvement in the theater capture. He was held in Denmark for five weeks and released due to lack of evidence.^[2]^[3]

On December 7, 2002, Zakayev returned to Britain but the British authorities arrested him on the London Heathrow Airport (he was released on 50,000 GBP bail, which was paid by Boris Berezovsky's foundation and the British actress Vanessa Redgrave who had traveled with him from Denmark). He was accused by Russian authorities of series of crimes rannging from kidnapping, murder of more than 300 troops and 12 civilians (employees of military commandant's office), and armed rebellion, to execution of two Russian Orthodox Church priests and planning terrorist attacks.

One accusation, cutting fingers of a suspected FSB informer Ivan Solovyov, was based on a written testimony by the former Zakayev's bodyguard Duk-Vakha Dushuyev provided by Russian authorities. However, it appeared that Solovyev had lost his fingers much earlier "apparently to a frostbite", and witness Dushuyev escaped from Russia and told the court that he was tortured at a Russian army base with electric shocks to extort the false testimony against Zakayev.^[2]^[4] In addition, one of two supposedly murdered priests (Father Sergei) turned out to be alive, while another witness Reverend Filipp, supposedly kidnapped by Zakayev in 1996, also refuted his testimony and denounced Russian authorities for "implicating the Church in politics". Leading Russian human rights activist Sergei Kovalev said Zakayev would be at risk of death in Russian captivity, and spoke about two high-profile Chechen prisoners, Salman Raduyev and Turpal-Ali Atgeriev, who quickly died after being jailed in Russia, and another, Ruslan Alikhadzhiyev, who disappeared after arrest. According to Alexander Goldfarb, one of the defence’s most important arguments was the meeting between Zakayev and Kazantsev at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport in 2001, which took place when the Chechen envoy had already been put by Russia on the international wanted list, and during which Sergey Yastrzhembsky appeared on Russian television and said that Russian government had no grievances against Zakayev.^[5]

Therefore, on November 13, 2003, a British judge rejected the Russian request, saying that it was politically motivated and that he would be at risk of torture in the case of "unjust and oppressive" extradition.^[6] He also said the crimes which involve Zakayev allegedly using armed force against combatants were not extraditable because they took place in an "internal armed conflict" situation.^[7] Russian authorities in turn responded by accusing the court of "double standards".^[8]

Political asylum

On November 29, 2003, it was announced that he had been granted political asylum in the UK.^[9] Since then, he has visited Germany and Poland without being arrested. During the September 2004 Beslan school hostage crisis, Zakayev agreed with the civilian negotiators and authorities of North Ossetia-Alania to fly to Russia to negotiate with the hostage takers. However, siege ended in bloody confusion just few hours before this could happen.^[10]^[11]^[12]

In London, Zakayev became a close friend to the Russian dissident and former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, murdered by radioactive poisoning in November 2006.^[13] Zakayev accused the President of Russia Vladimir Putin of ordering the death of Litvinenko.^[14] In 2007, British police warned Zakayev that there was an increased threat to his personal security shortly before the alleged attempt to kill Berezovsky.^[15] According to the KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky in 2008, Zakayev was placed #2 on the FSB assassination list, between Berezovsky and Litvinenko.^[16]

On October 31, 2007, Zakayev officially distanced himself from the resigned Chechen president Doku Umarov and the Chechen Islamist ideologist Movladi Udugov who together declared the creation of Caucasus Emirate. Zakayev called for the remnants of the separatist parliament to form the new government.^[17] Soon after, on November 20, 2007, Zakayev has submitted his resignation from the ministerial post, but said this should not be viewed as a departure from "the fight for our independence, our freedom, and for the recognition of our state".^[18] Since November 2007, Zakayev says he is now the Prime Minister of the Chechen government in exile.^[19]^[20]