Chechen militant leader Doku Umarov neutralised - FSB chief

MOSCOW, April 8 (Itar-Tass) - Director of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Aleksander Bortnikov has confirmed that Chechen militant ringleader Doku Umarov has been neutralised. Taking the floor on Tuesday at a meeting of the National Anti-Terrorism Committee (NAC) he heads he said that in the first quarter of this year “the head of the terrorist organisation Imarat Kavkaz, Doku Umarov, was neutralised as a result of a special combat operation.” Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov has repeatedly said that Umarov was dead. Thus, in an interview to three federal television channels he said that there was a record of conversations of the ringleaders of a number of bandit groups, operating in Kabardino-Balkaria and Dagestan, in which the election of a new “emir” was mentioned in connection with the death of Umarov. Last December, at a news conference at Itar-Tass Kadyrov had already stated that Umarov was most likely long dead. In March 2014, several extremist websites reported the death of the leader of the Caucasus bandit underground, Umarov. Doku Umarov is the organiser of terrorist activities in the North Caucasus and their active participant. He was on the wanted list on charges of staging numerous terrorist acts, kidnappings, murders and other grave crimes. In particular, he claimed responsibility for the explosion of the Nevsky Express speed train in 2009 when 28 people were killed, as well as for the March 2010 terror acts in Moscow’s metro underground railway system that claimed the lives of 40 people. The investigation believes that he was the mastermind of a suicide bombing at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport on January 24, 2011, which killed 35 people. The U.S. Department of State and UN Security Council put Umarov on the list of the most dangerous international terrorists. Learn more on itar-tass.com