2 [Russian] Agents Charged in Qatar Killing
Friday, Feb. 27, 2004. Page 1
2 Agents Charged in Qatar Killing
By Anatoly Medetsky
Staff Writer Acting Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Thursday that Qatar has arrested and charged two Russian security agents on suspicion of involvement in the car bomb assassination of former Chechen rebel president Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev. He flatly denied the allegation.
Ivanov said the detainees were security agents sent to the Russian Embassy in Doha, the Qatari capital, to collect and analyze information related to fighting international terrorism -- a job they carried out "without violating local law."
Ivanov angrily demanded that Qatar immediately release the "illegally" arrested suspects and stressed again that Russia had nothing to do with the Feb. 13 killing.
"Russian officials have already stated that our country doesn't have anything to do with the incident. Therefore, attempts by Qatari authorities to hold the arrested Russian citizens responsible for the attempt on Yandarbiyev's life are totally unsubstantiated -- they had nothing to do with the incident," Ivanov said in a statement posted on the ministry's web site and broadcast on state television.
It was not clear when the agents arrived in Qatar. Yandarbiyev was badly wounded in the car bomb attack in Doha and died en route to the hospital. His teenage son was wounded.
Qatari special services, using firearms and "rough physical force," arrested the two agents together with a third Russian in Doha in the wee hours of Feb. 19, Ivanov said.
The Russians were arrested in a private rented house where they were staying near the Russian Embassy, a duty officer at the embassy, Alexander Gordeyev, said by telephone from Doha. He said "a very large number" of Qatari agents swarmed onto the property, knocking down the front gate and storming the house.
Ivanov said Qatari authorities did not inform the Russian Embassy about the arrests immediately and refused to let the suspects meet with embassy staff for seven days -- a violation, he said, of international law.
The Foreign Ministry dispatched a special envoy to Qatar, and after talks with the Qatari side won the release of one of the suspects.
Qatar's Interior Ministry said the man had a diplomatic passport and was freed Tuesday. Qatari prosecutors charged the other two Russians on Wednesday.
Russia's ambassador to Qatar, Viktor Kudryavtsev, said Thursday that the two jailed Russians did not have any complaints about prison conditions during a recent visit with embassy officials, Interfax reported. The embassy is working to set up regular meetings with the detainees, he said.
The Russian Foreign Ministry on Thursday summoned the Qatari ambassador to Moscow, Saad Mohammed Al-Kobaisa, for a second time in as many days to file a formal protest.
Foreign Intelligence Service spokesman Boris Labusov refused to comment about the case Thursday.
However, Mikhail Lyubimov, a veteran of the KGB, said that even if the special services had been involved in Yandarbiyev's death, they would not have used agents officially listed as embassy employees, Interfax reported.
Russian officials have speculated that Yandarbiyev might have been killed in a vendetta from his days in Chechnya or in a dispute over his distribution of foreign money for Chechen rebels, which reportedly went through his hands.
Ivanov in his statement accused Qatar of "connivance with international terrorism" by providing refuge to Yandarbiyev, who lived in Qatar for three years despite attempts by Moscow to extradite him.
He later told reporters that Russia had to pay special attention to the activities of private funds in Qatar, which he said were raising money for terrorists.
Yandarbiyev is suspected of masterminding several attacks in Russia that claimed "hundreds of lives," and he gave orders to Chechen rebels inside Moscow's Dubrovka theater during the October 2002 hostage crisis, Ivanov said in the statement. Channel One television said Yandarbiyev gave the orders by telephone.
Yandarbiyev, who was Chechen president from 1996 to 1997, had recently been put on UN and U.S. lists of suspected terrorists at Russia's urging. He was a proponent of radical Islam and, Channel One reported, the author of several books on jihad.
The Qatari Embassy declined to comment Thursday. An embassy spokeswoman said the Qatari Foreign Ministry would issue a statement early next week
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