Moscow, July 25 — Russia’s most wanted militant has claimed last month’s shooting in Moscow of a top colonel who was convicted of strangling to death an 18-year-old girl in war-torn Chechnya.
A man who identified himself as guerrilla leader Doku Umarov said in a video message posted on the rebel Kavkazcenter website on Saturday evening that he was responsible for colonel Yuri Budanov’s death.
He was shown sitting next to a heavily bearded man identified as commander of the Riyadus-Salikhiyn Brigade — the same group that organized the 2004 school hostage crisis in Beslan that killed 334 people. Budanov — a tank commander who was the most senior officer convicted of war crimes in the nearly two decades of fighting in Chechnya — was jailed in 2003 following a controversial trial of the murder of local teen Elza Kungayeva.
He was released in January 2009 after serving less than six years of his 10-year sentence and having molestation charges dropped despite family protests.
Budanov became a nationalist hero even before his conviction but preferred to stay out of politics and the public limelight once he was released.
The discovery of his bullet-riddled body raised immediate fears of reprisal attacks from Russian nationalists and concern that the killing was meant to further stir ethnic tensions. –
Budanov’s funeral was attended by Russian far right leaders such as Vladimir Zhirinovsky and accompanied by a formal three-gun salute.
Moscow police reported making a dozen arrests immediately after the slaying before closing most of the investigation to the press.
But an unnamed police source told Interfax that investigators were now studying Umarov’s tape. “We have been expecting this kind of statement for a long time,” an unnamed member of the investigative team told the news agency.
—Agencies