Russian security forces kill rebel leader in North Caucasus

PanARMENIAN.Net - Russia's National Anti-Terrorism Committee said on Friday, January 27 a prominent rebel leader responsible for a series of high-profile acts of "sabotage and terrorism" had been killed in a raid by security forces in the volatile North Caucasus republic of Ingushetia earlier in the day.

Dzhamaleim Mutaliyev, 35, known as Adam, was a leader of Caucasus Emirate, a loose umbrella organization of militant groups operating in the North Caucasus, and a close associate of notorious North Caucasus warlord Shamil Basayev who was killed in July 2006, the committee said in a statement.

Mutaliyev is believed to be a mastermind of a several deadly terrorist attacks, including the September 2010 market bombing in the North Caucasus city of Vladikavkaz, in which 19 people were killed and some 240 injured, and a suicide attack on a highway in the republic of Chechnya, which left four police officers dead, the statement said.

Mutaliyev joined North Caucasus insurgency against the federal government during the second Chechen War in 1999-2000, and has held the title of Caucasus Emirate’s “military emir” since the arrest of his predecessor Ali Taziyev in 2010, the committee said.

The two other militants killed in the raid were Bekhan Ganiyev, 23, who was also involved in terrorist activity, including attacks on police, and Magomed Katsiyev, “a militant accomplice,” whose age was not mentioned in the statement.

Security forces found an improvised explosive device equivalent to some 15 kg of TNT, an arms cache, and a suicide vest at the house where the militants were hiding, the statement said. Despite the official end of the decade-long counter-terrorism campaign in the North Caucasus in 2009, militant attacks on the police, FSB and other officials are frequent there, RIA Novosti reported.