Chechen Rebel Chief Sentenced to Life Term for Deadly ’96 Raid

His disfigured face hidden by sunglasses, a shaggy beard and a peaked cap, Chechen separatist commander Salman Raduyev stood, chin jutting defiantly, after being sentenced in a Russian court Tuesday to life for terrorism and murder.

His last words before being led away were “Allahu akbar”--God is great.

Military helicopters circled low over the court in Makhachkala, the capital of Russia’s Caucasian republic of Dagestan, which borders Chechnya, adding drama as the high-profile trial came to an end. The Russian prosecutor general, Vladimir Ustinov, called the verdict a “triumph for justice” and promised more big trials of Chechen commanders in the near future.

Despite such hype, Raduyev is the only well-known Chechen commander the Russians have captured. They did kill one other top commander, Arbi Barayev, in June.

Raduyev, badly scarred in several bombings and assassination attempts in Chechnya, was on trial for his role in the 1996 attack on the Dagestani town of Kizlyar.

Russia has portrayed its struggle against Chechen separatists as a fight against international terrorists, and the trial has received extensive media coverage.

The verdict was trumpeted by Russian law enforcement officials as a symbol of the authorities’ triumph over terrorism.

But when Raduyev was captured in March 2000, he was no longer an active fighter. He has played no significant part in the present conflict in Chechnya, which began in fall 1999, when Russian forces reentered the southern republic after being forced out several years earlier.

He was an active figure in the first Chechen war, from 1994 to 1996, but even then was regarded by some other Chechen field commanders as something of a loose cannon.

Raduyev and about 300 fighters took an estimated 3,000 hostages in the hospital in Kizlyar, then moved a smaller group of hostages to the nearby village of Pervomayskoye. Russian forces surrounded Pervomayskoye, allowing no one to leave, and heavily bombarded it for more than a week, killing many civilians.

Raduyev and most of his forces, however, escaped. Seventy-eight others, including civilians and servicemen, died in Kizlyar and Pervomayskoye.

Ustinov, the Russian prosecutor general, handled the trial personally--an unusual step--and the extensive media coverage boosted his political prestige in Russia.

The prosecutor has become a powerful figure under Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, but he has been accused by human rights watchdogs of pursuing cases for political reasons and targeting those who run afoul of the Kremlin.

Dagestani Supreme Court Judge Baguzha Unzholov, who presided over the case, said so many people had died in the Kizlyar raid that it was difficult to remain dispassionate.

“The sentence I wrote makes it clear that no ideas of self-determination or national consciousness can justify the murder of people,” he said.

Sergei A. Kovalyov, a leading Russian human rights champion, expressed revulsion at Raduyev’s crimes but said the trial was a biased “showcase.”

“The entire trial is an inflated bubble that is presented as a major success in fighting terrorism in Chechnya,” said Kovalyov, adding that Raduyev is a boastful character who claimed responsibility for many terrorist acts, some of which he might not have committed.

“It cannot even be said with certainty whether Raduyev fully understands what he is doing and what he is talking about. But this has made him a very convenient person for the government to use in its propaganda show.

“In the absence of any real success in Chechnya, in a situation when the federal side is clearly stuck in this North Caucasus republic and is impotent to do anything, the Raduyev trial is a perfect case that can convince the public that the federal side is doing a good job fighting Chechen terrorists,” he said.

Kovalyov said the trial failed to expose the truth: that the Russian military was responsible for most of the civilian deaths in Pervomayskoye.

“The most surprising thing about the Raduyev trial is how lopsided it was from start to finish. The court, for some reason, has not considered the fact that in Pervomayskoye, it was the federal troops who killed the majority of civilians in the course of the so-called anti-terrorist operation,” he said.

“The court did not need or did not want to see the whole picture. It was enough to have Raduyev in the dock and sentence him.

“No one even remembered that it was the federal troops who drove the fleeing rebels into Pervomayskoye, how the siege of Pervomayskoye was conducted and how many civilians were killed in that siege,” he said. “The number of civilian lives that lies on Raduyev’s conscience hardly exceeds that of the federal side.”