Sheikh Abdul Halim

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Sheikh Abdul Halim

Sheikh Abdul-Halim Abu-Salamovich Sadulayev (Шейх Абдул-Халим) (1966 – 17 June 2006) was the fourth Chechen rebel president to be killed in 11 years of separatist warfare in the southern Russian region.

Sadulayev was the first Chechen leader to spread the conflict outside Chechnya, as he had won pledges of loyalty not only from Chechen separatists, but also from Islamic fundamentalist groups seeking the overthrow of the Kremlin's authority across southern Russia. Sadulayev, however, is credited with persuading warlord Shamil Basayev not to carry out any major terrorist attacks since Beslan. He had a substantial following among young Muslims disenchanted with corruption and violence among Ramzan Kadyrov and his entourage.

1 Name
2 Biography
3 Presidency
4 Death
- 4.1 Memorial investigation
5 External links

[edit] Name

His surname is variously written Sadulaev, Sadulayev, Saidulaev, Saidulayev, Saidullaev, Saidullayev or Saydullayev; the first two of these seem to be favored by insurgent sources, while the others are favored by Russian sources and Western media. His first name is also written Abdul-Khalim, and is sometimes written with or without a hyphen. In Russian his name with surname is written Абдул-Халим Сайдуллаев or Абдул-Халим Сайдулаев or Абдул-Халим Садулаев, with or without the hyphen. There is considerable variation in writing his name in both English and Russian sources. His full name given by the separatist website Kavkazcenter appears to be Abdul-Halim Abu-Salamovich Sadulayev (Абдул-Халим Абу-Саламович Садулаев).

[edit] Biography

Sadulayev was born into the Ustradoi teip, an influential clan in the town of Argun on the plains of central Chechnya to the east of Grozny. After growing up in Argun, he entered Chechnya's university to study philology, but had to break off his studies as the First Chechen War with Russian Federation broke out in 1994 in which he fought against the Russians in local Argun militia. He also studied Islam under local Islamic theologians and from 1996 began what would become regular appearances on Chechen television speaking about Islam. He lectured across Chechnya and led Argun's Muslim community, for a while as the town's Imam. Sadulayev made the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, the only time he is known to have left his homeland.

In 1999, Aslan Maskhadov appointed Sadulayev to a commission for constitutional Sharia reform, a commission then headed by Akhmad Kadyrov, who would later reject the rebels and embrace Moscow. When the Second Chechen War started Sadulayev again returned to fighting with the Argun-based rebels. In 2002, Sadulayev was designated by Maskhadov to be his successor as president of the self-proclaimed Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. Shortly following Maskhadov's death on 8 March 2005, the Chechen rebel council announced that Sadulayev had assumed Maskhadov's position, a move that was quickly endorsed by Shamil Basayev, the Chechens' highest-profile guerilla commander.

[edit] Presidency

After assuming power, Sadulayev ruled out any prospects of unconditional negotiations with Russia, an idea that Maskhadov had raised. Instead, he pushed for an extension of rebel activities into the greater North Caucasus region, seeking to establish an Islamic caliphate throughout Ingushetia, North Ossetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Stavropol, Karachay-Cherkessia, Adygea, and Krasnodar Krai. In recent months, he had called for expanding the Chechnya conflict into a "decolonization" of Muslim-dominated adjoining regions and adoption of a constitution based on Islamic law, or Sharia. He condemned hostage-taking, a popular local way of raising money.

Sadulayev had not only an ideological commitment to maintaining the conflict, but perhaps a personal one as well: Chechen insurgent sources claim that his wife was kidnapped in 2003 by Russian spetsnaz forces and killed by the FSB when attempts to buy her back failed. He had worked to eliminate terrorist violence, publicly denounced the targeting of civilians and urged Basayev and other warlords to direct attacks on "legitimate targets," including law enforcement officials, federal troops and local civil servants and their offices. He appears to have convinced Basayev that giving up on civilian targets would help spread the insurgency across the North Caucasus.

[edit] Death

On 17 June 2006 Sadulayev was killed in a gun battle with the FSB and pro-Moscow militiamen in Argun. According to the FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev, two members of the federal forces were killed and five were wounded in a firefight in which Sadulayev and his bodyguard were killed, and two others escaped. The rebel news agency Daymokh stated Sadulaev was attacked by "at least 300 Russian soldiers and about 50 Chechen traitors," and defended the house for the next two hours. [1]

The body was later moved to Ramzan Kadyrov's hometown of Tsentoroi. Kadyrov, posing and grinning for television cameras next to a battered, half-naked body of Sadulayev, said the informant had tipped off police for drug money; he claimed that rebel forces there had "been dealt a decisive blow from which they will never recover." Kadyrov said that his paramilitary police had wanted to capture Sadulayev but were forced to kill him when he resisted arrest, and also stated Sadulayev was in Argun organizing a "terrorist attack" to coincide with the Group of Eight summit in St. Petersburg next month; he did not elaborate.

The next day, on June 18, Sadulayev was succeeded as head of the Chechen resistance by the rebel vice-president and an active guerrilla commander Doku Umarov.

[edit] Memorial investigation

On June 20, the Russian human rights organization Memorial posted the findings of its investigation on the Kavkazky Uzel website. According to Memorial, Sadulaev's death was accidental; security officials did not know that he was in the house. Memorial reports that on June 17, about 10:00 am, a group of FSB officers approached a possible rebel safe house. They immediately came under gunfire as they entered the yard. Two of the servicemen were killed, and the group quickly retreated after throwing a hand grenade into a window of the house. The grenade killed Sadulayev.

About 20 minutes later, two armed men left the house and went to another house nearby where a celebration of a funeral was going at that time. They asked Roman Ubraimov, a guest who had come to the gathering in a minibus, to take them to the nearby village of Mesker-Urt; yet more men boarded the minibus en route, so Ubraimov does not know exactly how many gunmen he drove out of town. As the vehicle was leaving the city, it passed an armored motorcade of Russian forces rushing to help their colleagues at the safe house; the Russians ignored the minibus, unaware that their suspects were inside. Ubraimov told the Memorial investigator that the gunmen had telephoned someone on the way and said, "We lost a brother."