BACKGROUND: 47-year old Alu Alkhanov was Minister of Interior in Kadyrov’s government. A bureaucrat and former transport police chief, Alkhanov was, unlike Kadyrov, never an advocate of Chechnya’s independence. After Chechen fighters defeated the Russian forces in 1996, Alkhanov left Chechnya to work in the local police department of a small Russian village close to Ukraine. […]

BACKGROUND: Abd Al-Aziz Bin Ali Bin Said Al Said Al-Ghamdi, known as Abu Al-Walid, took over leadership of Arab fighters in Chechnya after the death of Amir Khattab (Samer Bin Saleh Bin Abdullah Al-Swelim) in 2002. Accused by the Russian government of being the mastermind of numerous terrorist attacks in Chechnya and Moscow, Al-Walid is the […]