Salman Raduyev
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- This article is about Salman Raduyev, with the nickname "Titanic". For other uses, see Titanic.
Salman Raduyev (or Raduev; Russian: Салма́н Раду́ев; February 13, 1967–December 14, 2002) was a rogue Chechen warlord.
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[edit] Rise to fame
In June of 1992 Raduyev was appointed the prefect of Gudermes by Chechen Republic of Ichkeria President Dzhokhar Dudaev, his father-in-law. During the First Chechen War, he became a field commander for the separatist Chechen forces. Raduyev was one of the best known of the rebel field commanders, commanding strategically important Gudermessky District. On December 14, 1995 Raduyev along with Sultan Geliskhanov led a 3-day raid on the city of Gudermes.
On January 9, 1996, allegedly on Dudayev's order, Raduyev's "Lone Wolf" team launched a copycat raid of the Budyonnovsk hospital hostage crisis on the helicopter military airfield and a civilian hospital in Kizlyar, Dagestan. This was followed by a fierce battle for the border village of Pervomaiskoye. A field commander Hunkarpasha Israpilov later said that he took over command of the operation from Raduyev after the latter failed in his mission to destroy the airbase. [1] The indiscriminate assault by Russian forces resulted in the destruction of Pervomaiskoye and the deaths of numerous civilians.
[edit] Kizlyar raid
Rebel fighters led by Raduyev destroyed several helicopters at the Kizlyar military base and attacked the town, where they took some 1,500 to 3,000 hostages at a nearby hospital. All but about 120 were released after a day, but the rebels were using the remaining hostages as a human shields in an attempt to go back to Chechnya.
The rebels then headed in the direction of Chechnya but were blocked by Russian troops at the border village of Pervomaiskoye, where they entrenched themselves. Russian special forces tried for three days to break into the village. After failing to do so, then Interior Minister Anatoly Kulikov and then Federal Security Service Director Mikhail Barsukov, declaring that Raduyev's men had executed all of the hostages, ordered that the Russian forces open fire on the village with multiple rocket launchers.
Nevertheless, hostages were still alive and appealing desperately to the Russian security forces to cease firing on the village. On the eighth night, despite Interior Minister Kulikov's assurances that three rings of security forces had surrounded the village, Raduyev and his men managed to break out of the encirclement and escape, taking many of surviving hostages with them. His later indictment said 78 Russian soldiers, police officers and civilians were killed during the raid; of these 25 civilians were said to have died in Kizlyar, and another 16 hostages died during the fighting in Pervomaiskoye.
In March 1996 Raduyev was shot in the head and incorrectly reported dead.
[edit] Out of control
In summer of 1996 Raduyev returned from medical treatment abroad and refused the orders of Zelimkhan Yandarbiev to stop carrying out terrorist operations despite the ceasefire and talks that would lead up to the Khasavyurt Agreements. He claimed that Dzhokhar Dudaev was alive and issuing orders to him from a secret NATO base in Turkey. In the newspaper interview in 1997, the new Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov described Raduyev as "mentally ill".[2] Even Shamil Basayev called Raduyev "crazy."
Maskhadov reduced Raduyev from the rank of Brigadier General to Private, but further action against him was blocked by a public opposition from numerous pro-Raduyev war veterans. Raduyev's private militia, called "General Dudaev's Army" was also involved in several train robberies and other criminal acts. In the meantime, Raduyev kept claiming responsibility for every explosion in Russia.
[edit] Decline and death
Raduyev was heavily wounded in a car bomb assassination attempt in 1998. This earned him the nickname of "Titanic" because his shattered skull was reconstructed with steel plates. Because of his injury, Raduyev did not take an active role in the Second Chechen War. He was captured in March 2000 by Russian special operations unit Vympel in his home. Raduyev was tried on multiple murder charges and, in December of 2001, was sentenced to life in prison.
On December 14, 2002, Salman Raduyev died in a penal colony from internal bleeding. The circumstances surrounding the death of Raduyev are not clear. According to his family he was murdered while serving a life sentence in a Russian prison. Amnesty International has called for a full investigation into the circumstances surrounding his death.[3]
