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Chechen Bosses Of Moscow Football Club Accuse Secret Service Of Blackmail
MOSCOW (AFP) - Bosses of Moscow's CSKA football club, many of whom are of Chechen origin, have accused Russia's federal security service of blackmail and death threats, Moscow's press reported.
CSKA board chairman, Andrei Trubitsyn, told the Novaya Gazeta weekly that the football side has been under constant pressure from the security service over the past two years.
Trubitsyn said a security service officer named Sebirov demanded that one of the side's Chechen co-founders, Ruslambek Khusainov, sell his CSKA shares, threatening that his family would otherwise be murdered.
He also claimed that federal security officers demanded cash donations, saying the money would be used to release Russian hostages in Chechnya.
"They call us a Chechen gang. Yes, our president [Shakhrudi] Dadakhanov has Chechen origins, as well as one of the selectioneers, [Avalu] Shamkhanov, and team doctor Chachayev," Trubitsyn told the weekly.
"They are Chechens, but it does not mean they are terrorists."
"We were repeatedly accused of supporting the rebels in the Chechen republic, but no proof of these charges were put forward," he added.
A Federal Security Service (FSB) spokesperson angrily denied all the charges when contacted by telephone on Monday.
CSKA's Trubitsyn said the former army-based side had been separated from Russia's military forces in 1996, adding that CSKA Moscow is currently financed only by private donations.
"The CSKA Moscow football side has no relations either to Russia's army or the rest of army sports organizations," Trubitsyn said
"We did not earn a single ruble from Russia's army in the last four years," he added.
Meanwhile, Chechen separatists have allegedly killed the deputy head of a pro-Moscow district office and his Chechen friend, the Kremlin's Chechnya spokesperson Sergei Yastrzhembsky told state RTR television Monday.
The attack took place in Sernovodsk near Chechnya's western border with Ingushetia on Sunday.
"Colonel Miskavets and a woman were visiting a male Chechen friend in Sernovodsk. The two men's bodies were later found in the host's home," said Yastrzhembsky.
He added that the woman accompanying the colonel had been kidnapped.
Miskavets, whose first name was not available, was the deputy head of the southwestern Achkhoi-Martan district.
Nearly 14 months after Russia launched its military intervention in Chechnya on October 1, 1999, separatists continue to carry out punishment attacks against Chechens collaborating with Moscow.
Since his June appointment, top civilian administrator in the republic, Akhmad Kadyrov, has been the target of a series of assassination attempts by separatists who have a bounty on his head.
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