Shamil Basaev with his father and two brothers in 1996. Only older brother Shurvani (right) remains alive, and he is living abroad. His blood is needed to positively identify Basaev's body.
Photo: www.photoxpress.ru
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Investigators Slip on the Blood
// Problems with the identification of Terrorist No. 1
The Regional Operative Staff for antiterrorist operations in the North Caucasus announced the arrest of Ibragim Tsakaev, a relative by marriage of Shamil Basaev. Security agencies say that Tsakaev is one of the leaders of an armed formation that has long been on their wanted lists. One of the possible motivations for the arrest of Tsakaev, who handicapped, is to pressure Basaev's relatives into helping with the identification of remains.
The arrest of 24-year-old Tsakaev was not the result of a massive search or lengthy investigation. He was caught at a checkpoint on the border between Chechnya and Dagestan when police stopped the car he was traveling in for an inspection. The driver's papers were in order, but the young man in the passenger's seat missing his right arm and two fingers from his left hand could not but attract interest. Police discovered from their computer database that he was wanted for membership in illegal armed formations and as having “close ties” with Basaev, who was killed on July 10. The Regional Operative Staff and FSB discovered from their archives that Tsakaev, also known as Yusuf, was a mid-level commander under Basaev. They fought together in the first and second Chechen campaigns. He lost his arm in 2004 outside Avturami when he was hit by a grenade. He underwent treatment in Baku, Azerbaijan, and later in Turkey, then occupied himself with fundraising for his comrades still in combat. Basaev was married to his sister, who was killed in 1995 when their home in the village of Dyshne-Vedeno was bombed. That house, incidentally, is still in ruins. No one has claimed the lot it stands on.
Tsakaev presents little interest to law enforcement. He is no longer fit for combat and his fundraising efforts abroad would be difficult to prove. It can be assumed, therefore, that the special services want him for other reasons. Representatives of the Ichkerian regime living abroad say that Tsakaev is practically a hostage and only Basaev's close relatives can free him only by meeting their demands. They want biomaterial: blood samples, hair samples or nail clippings.
Sources inside the investigation tell Kommersant that the process of identifying the remains of Basaev has come to a standstill. Visual identification is impossible. Pathologists were able to take the fingerprints of the five fingers that survived the blast and to take biological samples. But they have nothing to compare them with. Basaev's fingerprints are not on file anywhere and no usable prints were found at the site of the blast. Investigators are looking for a parent, sibling or child of the terrorist, but they have been unsuccessful in their search so far. Basaev's father Salman was shot in 2002 near Nozhai-Yurt for resisting an identification check. His mother Nura was taken by relatives to Baku before the beginning of the second Chechen campaign and died there shortly afterward. His younger brother Valid was killed when Basaev's house was bombed and his older brother Shirvani has been declared dead several times, but is reported to be living in Turkey.
Basaev's first wife, Abkhazian Indira Jenia, is known to be alive. Chief of the criminal investigation department of the Abkhazian Interior Ministry Murman Gegia told Kommersant that she had been living in her native village of Duripsh, near Gudauta, but left with two children, a boy and a girl, for either Azerbaijan or Turkey. There are reports that they are now living in The Netherlands. “Our friends and colleagues from Russia have not yet contacted us with a request to find the relatives of Basaev, Gegia said. “If they contact us, you can be sure that we will do everything possible, work with our sources in neighboring countries, and find them.”
Thus the body remains unidentified. In spite of the fact that FSB director Nikolay Patrushev and Russian Defense Minister Sergey Ivanov have announced his liquidation, the terrorist's body has not been legally identified. Until that process is concluded, there is no legally admissible evidence of the terrorist's death. Ibragim Tsakaev cannot help in that process except as bait. A similar strategy was used last year when the relatives of former Ichkerian president Aslan Maskhadov. Several of his relatives were rounded up in an effort to discover his location. Authorities did not succeed in that goal, but held them until close relatives agreed to give biological samples. The genetic material received from them was used in the eventual identification of Maskhadov's body.
Nikolay Sergeev
All the Article in Russian as of July 18, 2006
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