Chechen Admits Part in 1995 Budyonnovsk
Raid That Killed 144 People

MOSCOW (RIA Novosti) -- A Chechen extradited from Belarus this year admitted part in the 1995 raid of Budyonnovsk, Russia's Stavropol region neighboring on Chechnya, which took the lives of 144 people.

Nurmagomed Khatuyev, 38, who had been on Russia's federal wanted list, was extradited by Belarussian authorities on May 20, 2005.

"Khatuyev admitted part in military operations in the Chechen Republic in the periods from 1995 to 1996 and from 1999 to 2002," said Sergei Ignatchenko, the chief of the Federal Security Service's (FSB) public relations department. "In 1995, he took part in the armed attack on Budyonnovsk within a militant group led by Shamil Basayev, who took over 1,500 people hostage." Four hundred and fifteen people received injuries of different degrees of gravity.

Intelligence said Khatuyev had lived in Turkey for a rather long time. With his brother, "brigadier-general" Magomed Khatuyev, he had ensured support for separatist groups in Chechnya.

Twenty men were convicted for the June 14-19, 1995 raid of the city, while over 30 gunmen were killed as they had offered resistance, Nikolai Khazikov, the head of the Prosecutor General's Office's main department on Russia's Southern Federal District, told RIA Novosti.

Among those killed in the operation to free the hostages in Budyonnovsk were notorious warlords Abu Movsayev, Aslambek Abdulkhadzhiyev a.k.a. Bolshoi (big) Aslambek, and Aslambek Ismailov, or Malenky (Little) Aslambek. They were all Basayev's close associates.

Khatuyev was detained in Minsk this February at Minsk-2 airport. Belarussian law enforcement agencies found out Khatuyev had been on Russia's wanted list on the suspicion of being involved in the Budyonnovsk raid and the 2002 Moscow theater siege.