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Zakayev
is staying at a secret location
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COPENHAGEN,
December 4 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Top Chechen envoy Akhmed
Zakayev, sought by Russia on terrorism charges, claimed Wednesday to
have been held here as a “political hostage,” following Denmark’s
decision to free him and not extradite him to Moscow.
Zakayev,
envoy for rebel Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov, was freed here
Tuesday after the Danish justice ministry cited a lack of evidence in
the case and shed doubt on witnesses supporting the Russian extradition
request, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
Moscow
reacted angrily, with Russia’s justice minister denouncing the
decision as “political” and Russian officials vowing to appeal the
decision to the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights.
Zakayev
was arrested on October 30 by Danish police acting on a Russian arrest
warrant, initially accusing him of involvement in October’s Moscow
theater siege and various other attacks by Chechen rebels in the late
1990s.
Zakayev
said after his release that the Danish government’s decision to arrest
him had been political.
“I
was held as a political hostage in a scandal between Russia and Denmark,”
he said in a statement published Wednesday in the Danish daily
newspaper, Politiken.
The
attitude of the Russian authorities had been “totally out of
proportion,” he added.
“The
Russian authorities provoked the Danish police by send an extradition
order and in linking me to terrorism,” he added.
Zakayev
stressed that he was not angry with the Danish authorities. “Denmark
is a society of laws, and according to the rules, the police had to
arrest me, because they had received an extradition demand and were
obliged to respond,” he said.
The
Danish government had also “sought to reduce the Russian pressure by
arresting me,” Zakayev said.
Zakayev
was staying at a secret location, the center-left Politiken
reported.
However,
Danish television showed the outside of a Copenhagen hotel where he was
thought to be staying.
The
Danish foreign ministry said that it had summoned the Russian ambassador
to explain its decision to release Zakayev.
The
release looks set to further sour relations between the two countries,
strained for over a month since Denmark
refused to ban a Chechen conference in the Danish capital at which
Zakayev was speaking.
Russian authorities
said last month they had handed Denmark
information allegedly linking Zakayev to the kidnapping of two Orthodox
priests in 1996, including one man who has denied having been abducted
by the top Chechen negotiator. 
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