Chechen separatist leader surrenders

Magomed Khambiev, a Chechen guerilla leader, "voluntarily surrendered to Chechnya's authorities" on March 8, the media says. Khambiev was detained by Akhmat Kadyrov's security service in Benoi, Nozhai-Yurt district, Chechnya, according to available information. A close relative of the commander said in a conversation with Caucasian Knot Khambiev had been forced to surrender after security officers had taken several close relatives of his hostage and threatened to shoot them. "A large-scale 'special operation' was conducted in Grozny, Benoi, and Nozhai-Yurt on March 1 leading to about 20 of our relatives seized by law enforcement and security officers. (Among them was Aslambek Khambiev, a first-year medical student at the Chechen State University, released the other day). Then an ultimatum was produced via the elders: they all would be shot unless Magomed Khambiev surrenders," our interlocutor maintains. He says Khambiev was captured in the house of one of his relatives and then brought to Kadyrov's ancestral settlement, Tsentoroi, where the procedure was carried out of a "penitent associate of Maskhadov giving himself up."

Magomed Khambiev is a brother of Umar Khambiev, a well-known doctor in the republic and former Health Minister of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria; he has lived in Europe since 2000, representing the government of Ichkeria. Magomed Khambiev was considered in Chechnya one of the closest associates of Ichkeria's President Aslan Maskhadov. When the "first Chechen war" was over, Khambiev commanded the National Guard. Maskhadov conferred the military rank of Division General on him in 1999 (Ruslan Gelaev and Shamil Basaev had been the only persons to hold such a rank before) and appointed him Defense Minister of Ichkeria. Many residents in the republic believe Khambiev's arrest a sort of present from the active Chechen leadership to President Vladimir Putin of Russia on the threshold of elections.