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Salman Raduyev, Convicted Chechen Warlord, Dies December 15, 2002 By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 7:34 p.m. ET MOSCOW (AP) -- A Chechen warlord who led a bloody 1996 raid on a Russian hospital that killed 78 people died in a prison camp while serving a life sentence, Russia's Justice Ministry said Sunday. He was 35. Salman Raduyev died early Saturday in a high security camp in the Perm region, about 750 miles east of Moscow, ministry and prison officials said. Deputy Justice Minister Yuri Kalinin said Raduyev died from internal bleeding due to ``natural causes,'' dismissing suggestions of foul play. ``I can admit that some conjectures could appear ... but this would be absolutely groundless,'' Kalinin said, citing a Health Ministry autopsy report. Raduyev was the second prominent Chechen rebel to die in Russian custody this year. In August, Raduyev's accomplice in the 1996 raid, Turpal-Ali Atgeriyev, died in a prison hospital in the Ural mountain city of Yekaterinburg. Officials said he died of leukemia. Raduyev was arrested in March 2000. A year ago he was convicted of terrorism and murder and sentenced to life in prison by a court in southern Russia. Atgeriyev was sentenced to 15 years in prison at the same trial. The charges against them focused on a January 1996 raid on the southern Russian town of Kizlyar. He and other rebels took hundreds of hostages at a local hospital and used some of them as human shields. The raid, which came at the end of the first Chechen war, left 78 people dead. Russian troops pulled out of Chechnya in 1996 after failing to overcome separatists. Russian forces returned in 1999 after rebel raids in a neighboring region and after apartment-house bombings that killed more than 300 people in Russian cities. Raduyev's raid seemed a bid to recreate the success of the popular Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev who had led fighters into the southern town of Budyonnovsk, near the border with breakaway Chechnya, in June 1995. Basayev's fighters took more than 1,000 people hostage in a hospital. After gunbattles that killed more than 100, Russian forces reached agreement to free the hostages and let the raiders escape back into the mountains. Basayev, one of Chechnya's chief warlords, remains at large and is one of Russia's most wanted men. He claimed responsibility for the Oct. 23-26 siege of a Moscow theater that ended after Russian special forces stormed the building, killing 41 hostage-takers. At least 129 of the hostages also died from the effects of a narcotic gas used to knock out the militants. The Moscow hostage-taking unlike the earlier raids by Basayev and Raduyev brought the Chechen war straight to the Russian capital. Raduyev had been injured numerous times during the Chechen conflict. During his trial, Raduyev sat in a cage, wearing a baseball cap and large aviator sunglasses that the Russian media reported was to hide significant plastic surgery. He maintained that he only obeyed orders from late separatist leader Dzhokhar Dudayev when he conducted the raid, and that the court was trying to ``make me a scapegoat.'' Russian President Vladimir Putin has rejected calls to negotiate with elected separatist President Aslan Maskhadov, whom the Kremlin blames for this year's hostage-taking. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/obituaries/AP-Obit-Raduyev.html?ex=1041003019&ei=1&en=8b3637b2186e94d0 HOW TO ADVERTISE --------------------------------- For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters or other creative advertising opportunities with The New York Times on the Web, please contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] or visit our online media kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo For general information about NYTimes.com, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. 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