Dzhabrail Yamadayev

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Dzhabrail posing with a handgun

Dzhabrail Yamadayev was a former Chechen rebel field commander during the First Chechen War. He switched sides together with his brothers Sulim Yamadayev and Ruslan Yamadayev in 1999 during the outbreak of the Second Chechen War and then became the commander of Vostok, a company-sized local special unit directly submitted to the General Staff of the Russian Army, and the deputy military commandant of Chechnya. Yamadayev was assassinated by a bomb blast in March 2003.

1 Biography
2 See also
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Biography

During the First Chechen War the five Yamadayev brothers fought against the Russian troops and enjoyed great influence as field commanders. Dzhabrail held the rank of Ichkerian Brigadier General.^[1] When the second war in Chechnya broke out in 1999, Yamadayevs had voluntary defected to a Moscow's side and Dzhabrail became a prominent supporter of Akhmad Kadyrov, leading an elite special force with a core of several dozen of former Ichkerian National Guardsmen.

On March 5, 2003, Dzhabrail Yamadayev was killed along with three of his bodyguards in his own house in the village of Dyshne-Vedeno by a bomb planted under a couch that he slept on; the explosion was so powerful that the house was almost completely destroyed. President of Russia Vladimir Putin awarded Dzhabrail a posthumous Hero of the Russian Federation medal, while Dzabrail's brother Sulim Yamadayev took over the Spetsnaz unit (in the fall of 2003 the company was upgraded to a battalion of the GRU).

According to the 2006 statement by the rebel leader Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev, Ramzan Kadyrov and his father Akhmad were behind the killing of Dzhabrail Yamadayev, and his brother Sulim later killed four of Dzhabrail's personal bodyguards who were involved in his murder.^[2] On May 7, 2008, remains belonging to Vakharsolt Zakayev, former Vostok soldier who had disappeared about six months after that incident and was assumed to have been killed by his colleagues on suspicion in taking part in assassination, were found in the outskirts of Gudermes.^[3]