Leader of Militant Group in Russia Is Killed, Reports Say

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/21/world/europe/aliaskhab-kebekov-reported-killed-russia.html

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MOSCOW — The leader of the Caucasus Emirate, the most active militant group in Russia, has been killed in a counterterrorism operation, the Russian authorities and Islamic militant websites reported Monday.

The leader — Aliaskhab Kebekov, a 43-year-old theologian — was shot dead on Sunday near the city of Buynaksk in the Dagestan region, Russia’s National Antiterrorism Committee said in a statement.

Mr. Kebekov led the Caucasus Emirate group for a little more than a year. During that time, Islamic militants mounted an audacious assault on Grozny, the fortified capital of Chechnya, that left 15 police officers dead last December. The attack appeared to be a direct challenge to Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen leader, and to one of President Vladimir V. Putin’s signature achievements: ending the conflict in Chechnya, which is adjacent to Dagestan.

Russia redoubled its antiterrorism efforts before the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Doku Umarov, Mr. Kebekov’s predecessor as head of the militant group, called on his followers publicly to strike at the games, but no attacks materialized. The Russian authorities claimed shortly after the Olympics that Mr. Umarov was dead.

It can be difficult to reliably confirm the deaths of prominent militants in Russia. The authorities had declared Mr. Umarov dead a half-dozen times before, only for him to reappear later.

Still, experts on counterterrorism and the Caucasus region who were interviewed on Monday said that official claims of Mr. Kebekov’s death were probably true this time because Russian militant sites like Kavkaz-Center had reported it as well.

“I think that there is little doubt here that he is dead,” said Mairbek Vatchagaev, an analyst of the Caucasus region for the Jamestown Foundation.

Mr. Kebekov, an expert in Shariah who lacked military experience, seemed an unlikely choice to lead the group. His best-known edict as leader may be his ban on the use of “black widow” suicide bombings carried out by women, which terrorized Russia for years. The bombings, a hallmark of Mr. Umarov’s tenure, killed dozens of people in the Moscow Metro, in a bus and train station in Volgograd, and in numerous attacks in Dagestan, Chechnya and elsewhere in the northern Caucasus.

Mr. Kebekov led the Caucasus Emirate group during a period of decline, as it was undermined by an expanding rival, the Islamic State. Several top commanders defected from the Caucasus Emirate over the last year to join the Islamic State, drawing fiery denunciations from Mr. Kebekov’s lieutenants in videos posted online.

Grigory Shvedov, editor of Caucasian Knot, an online news agency that reports on the region, said Mr. Kebekov’s death was a serious blow to the Caucasus Emirate that would probably tip the balance among Islamist militants further toward the Islamic State.

“The situation is somewhat paradoxical,” Mr. Shvedov said. “The people who have been killed are perhaps the less radical ones, because those who have dedicated themselves to the Islamic State, they are the more radical ones.”