Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev claimed he was behind last week's militant attacks in the southern Russian city of Nalchik that officials say left at least 139 people dead, according to a statement posted on a Chechen rebel-connected website yesterday.

Previous statements on the Kavkaz Center website said the attacks were carried out by militants affiliated with the Chechen rebels, but yesterday's statement was the first claim of a direct Basayev connection.

"The amir (leader) of the Kabardino-Balkaria sector of the Caucasus Front, Seyfullah, commanded the operation. I exercised general operational control," Basayev wrote in an e-mail to www.kavkazcenter.com. He said 217 fighters took part in the raid and put the number of rebel dead at 41.

He said the attacks on police and government buildings in Nalchik, the capital of the Kabardino-Balkariya republic, were launched by fighters of the republic's section of the so-called Caucasus Front, which is believed to include militant cells throughout the restive Caucasus region.
 
Basayev was quoted as saying that the leader of the front in Kabardino-Balkariya is "busy preparing other work that I have assigned him."

The region of Kabardino-Balkariya has long been affected by spillover violence from nearby Chechnya, as well as by local criminals. Earlier this year, police in Nalchik twice launched assaults on alleged Islamic militants holed up in apartments.

Some Muslims accuse law enforcement authorities of persecuting innocent believers who worship outside the officially sanctioned mosques, falsely branding them militants and planting compromising evidence such as drugs or weapons to ensure their prosecution.

Arsen Kanokov, who became president of Kabardino-Balkariya about three weeks ago, has shown inclinations to back off the pressure on the republic's Muslims.

"I believe it is wrong to close down mosques and herd people into one place," the newspaper Kommersant quoted him as saying in an interview published yesterday. "Nothing will be achieved from attempts to prevent people from praying."

Basayev, in the Kavkaz Center statement, said the militants had not targeted Kanokov "because he has ordered that mosques be reopened and this in fact saved his life."

Basayev organized the Beslan school siege that resulted in the death of 330 people in September 2004.

There had been rumors that Basayev, who lost a foot in a mine explosion in 2000, had been killed in the fighting in Nalchik.

The Chechen separatists' leader, Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev, named Basayev his deputy in August, in a sign of the group's growing radicalism.

(China Daily October 18, 2005)