Russia: February 14, 2004

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Former (1996-97) president of independent (after a short war with Russia) Chechnya Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev was assassinated by a car bomb in Qatar. Yandarbiyev has been living in exile in Qatar for the last three years and is accused by Russia of running part of the overseas fund raising network that funded the Chechen resistance in Chechnya. The FSB (the post-Cold War name of the old KGB) said, interestingly, that it was not responsible and had not done that sort of thing since 1959. Nothing was heard from the GRU (military intelligence, which has not changed its name), which has some of it's elite commando forces in Chechnya and is known to practice assassination. A third suspect is other Chechens, who had disagreements with Yandarbiyev over how the money was being handled. It's not known if Yandarbiyev was just a bagman (making sure the donations from wealthy Arabs got delivered) or an active fund raiser.  

 

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