Kadyrov Foe Shot Dead on City Street

The former head of security for assassinated Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov was shot dead Saturday on Leninsky Prospekt during a police operation to arrest him for purported involvement in abductions and killings in Chechnya.

Movladi Baisarov, who fell out of favor with Kadyrov's son, Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov, was shot by a Chechen special forces officer after pulling a grenade on arresting officers, City Prosecutor's Office spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko said Sunday.

Baisarov was pulled over by a group of officers from the city police and the Chechen Interior Ministry at around 6 p.m. near 30 Leninsky Prospekt in southern Moscow, Petrenko said.

As he was getting out of the car, he tried to hurl the grenade at the arresting officers, and "one of the Chechen special forces officers was forced to shoot him," Petrenko said.

Prosecutors are investigating the shooting to determine whether police used an appropriate amount of force during the arrest, she said.

Television footage showed Baisarov's body sprawled out next to the car and clad in a dark leather jacket. His face was bloody, and his face and shoulders lay in a pool of blood.

Baisarov's death came just days after he accused Ramzan Kadyrov of ordering his murder under the pretext of arresting him for abductions and killings in Chechnya.

In an interview published Tuesday in Vremya Novostei, Baisarov said a group of "armed men" close to Kadyrov had arrived in Moscow "with grenade launchers and a full load of ammunition ... to detain me."

"I heard the group arrived with verbal orders," he said.

"If they detain me or if I'm handed over to federal agencies, they will have to destroy me, and make it look as if I had tried to flee or something like that."

Baisarov, a former Chechen rebel who switched sides, headed the Gorets armed detachment that carried out anti-terrorist operations under the Federal Security Service, or FSB, but was disbanded earlier this year.

Several members of the unit surrendered their arms last week, but many others have declined to comply, effectively making them an illegal armed formation.

Ramzan Kadyrov announced in September that Chechen prosecutors had issued a federal arrest warrant for Baisarov on suspicion of participating in the January 2004 disappearance of a family in Grozny. Chechen authorities said last month that a grave containing 10 corpses of members of the family, the Musayevs, had been discovered and that they had information that Baisarov had shot some of them himself.

Human rights groups and ordinary Chechens have accused of Kadyrov and his paramilitary security force of kidnapping, torturing and killing civilians as well.

Kadyrov has denied wrongdoing.

As Kadyrov increased the pressure, Baisarov began attacking Kadyrov in interviews in the Russian media.

Political commentator Yulia Latynina said on her weekly radio show on Ekho Moskvy last week that the spat between the two would only end in bloodshed.

"I can't imagine how the conflict between Baisarov and Ramzan Kadyrov could be settled other than with the death of one or the other," said Latynina, who also writes a column for The Moscow Times.

Baisarov had been under FSB protection in Moscow, according to a report in Moskovsky Komsomolets on Friday.

An FSB spokesman declined to comment Sunday.

Novaya Gazeta journalist Vyacheslav Izmailov said Sunday that his newspaper was preparing to publish information linking Baisarov's murder with that of investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot dead by an unknown assailant in her apartment building on Oct. 7.

Izmailov, who worked closely with Politkovskaya on her stories about human rights abuses in Chechnya, said former Grozny Mayor Beslan Gantamirov had come to Novaya Gazeta's offices two weeks after Politkovskaya was murdered and said armed men close to Kadyrov had been sent to Moscow with orders to kill three people: Politkovskaya, Baisarov and Gantamirov himself.

Gantamirov, a Kremlin loyalist who was sidelined by Kadyrov's paramilitary force in 2002, could not be reached for comment Sunday.

Chechen Deputy Prime Minister Adam Demilkhanov denied that Baisarov had served as head of security for Akhmad Kadyrov. It was in fact Baisarov's brother, Sharani Baisarov, who had worked in the security detail and had been killed in the May 9, 2004, blast that killed the Chechen president, Demilkhanov said.

"We all knew Sharani Baisarov as a loyal, upstanding and brave soldier," Demilkhanov told Interfax. "We respected him and his family. His brother Movladi Baisarov, however, took the criminal path."

Movladi Baisarov has been identified as the head of Kadyrov's security in numerous media reports published over the past half decade. Reports around the time of Kadyrov's death identified Sharani Baisarov as a member of the security force who died in the blast.