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Top Chechnya Official Killed
MOSCOW, April 13 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Chechen separatists killed a top pro-Russian administrator in a daring bomb attack on a television studio, claiming their most senior victim since the start of the 18-month separatist war, the Kremlin said Friday.
Chechnya's pro-Moscow administration chief, Akhmad Kadyrov, immediately blamed Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov, who has been in hiding in the southern mountains of Chechnya, for the murder of his deputy, Adam Deniyev.
Shamalu Deniyev, had been giving a live television address at a television studio in the town of Avtury, southeast of the capital Grozny, when the bomb went off.
Deniyev, who died of head wounds on the way to hospital after the bomb blast late Thursday, "was killed by a terrorist attack," the Kremlin told AFP.
A prominent Islamic theologian, Deniyev was killed live on air while reciting a chapter of the Qur'an traditionally read by Muslims on Thursday nights, Russian media reported.
His death unleashed a flurry of charges and countercharges among rival Chechen factions, with sworn enemies accusing one another of carrying out the murder.
No organization has admitted responsibility for the attack, but the BBC's Moscow correspondent, Jacky Rowland, says suspicion is bound to fall on separtists fighting for independence from Moscow, reports the BBC.
Maskhadov reacted swiftly to Kadyrov's charges, declining to accept responsibility for Deniyev's killing and hinting that the official had been a secret agent of the Russian security services (FSB, formerly KGB).
"The Chechen [separatist] leadership offers its condolences to the FSB, which in Deniyev has lost an important collaborator," a Maskhadov spokesman told AFP.
A studio cameraman at the television station was also wounded in the blast that happened at 9:18 pm (1718 GMT) Thursday, according to the office of President Vladimir Putin's chief spokesman on Chechnya, Sergei Yastrzhembsky.
Deniyev, 41, is the most high-profile figure to be killed by separatist fighters as part of concerted strategy targeting pro-Moscow leaders.
Kadyrov, himself a victim of several failed assassination attempts, reacted angrily to Deniyev's murder Friday.
Several members of Kadyrov's government have been targeted in attacks, which Russia usually blames the attempts on separatists it drove out of power in a 19-month offensive, reports MSNBC.
"This is another act of terrorism. They have killed somebody who was trying every means possible to restore normal life to Chechnya," Kadyrov told the state-run RTR television channel.
He said that Deniyev was a prized target owing to his vocal opposition to the separatist leader, adding: "Maskhadov had threatened him, just as he had threatened me.
"We are going to try and find out who perpetrated this act, because it is known that Maskhadov who ordered this assassination," Kadyrov said.
The FSB also accused Maskhadov of killing Deniyev "under orders from the warlord Khattab."
"Deniyev was a staunch opponent of Maskhadov but there are other possible motives for his killing. It is perhaps an act of revenge. Two of his brothers were murdered," Chechnya's representative in the Russian parliament, Aslambek Aslakhanov, told AFP.
Deniyev was a candidate in Chechnya's 1996 presidential elections, which were won by Maskhadov, and came in second in August 2000 elections for Chechnya's seat in parliament, according to CNN.
While Chechen separtists have killed numerous local and regional officials in the war-torn republic, the bomb attack on Deniyev is the first time they have successfully targeted the highest level of Chechnya's central administration.
Deniyev first came to public notice during the first Chechen war in 1994-96 when he emerged as an opponent of former separatist leader Dzhokhar Dudayev, who was killed in April 1996.
A key figure in the anti-separatist Chechen diaspora after he opted for self-imposed exile in 1996, Deniyev ran for election as State Duma (lower house) deputy for Chechnya in August 2000 but was defeated by Aslakhanov.
In addition to his other duties, Deniyev was Kadyrov's special envoy to the Middle East and Africa, where he was charged with raising funds for Chechnya among Muslim states.
However, Chechen separatists and some independent media repeatedly accused Deniyev of collaborating with Russian security forces.
Dissident Russian journalist Andrei Babitsky, who was arrested in Chechnya last year in still unexplained circumstances after he filed reports criticizing the Kremlin, later claimed that it was Deniyev's men who had taken him prisoner.
European leaders have urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to seek a political settlement to the conflict - which he compares to the ethnic Albanian fighters in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, CNN reports.
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