Dubai vs Russia

Authorities in Dubai said Sunday that they believed the murder of Sulim B. Yamadayev, a former Chechen general, had been planned by a member of Russia’s lower house of Parliament who is a well-known ally of the Chechen president.

Adam S. Delimkhanov
At a news conference, Dubai’s chief of police, Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan bin Tamim, said that he would ask Interpol to arrest the member of Parliament, Adam S. Delimkhanov, and that it was “Russia’s responsibility in front of the world to control these killers from Chechnya.”
General Tamim’s allegation was striking because Mr. Delimkhanov is so close to Ramzan A. Kadyrov, Chechnya’s Kremlin-backed president. Mr. Yamadayev, who was shot in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, on March 31, was the latest in a series of Chechen figures to be killed after challenging Mr. Kadyrov.
Though the recent murders of Chechen dissidents have attracted wide attention, investigators had identified only low-level suspects — until Sunday, said Grigory Shvedov, the editor of the Web-based news service Caucasian Knot.
“Those were people no one knew,” Mr. Shvedov said of the suspects. “Today, we are talking about a person who is very well known, with a key position in the regional government and a very high position on the federal level.”
A person in the Russian prosecutor general’s office told the Interfax news agency that Mr. Delimkhanov could not be extradited under Russian law, but that prosecutors would consider pressing charges if they saw convincing evidence.
Mr. Delimkhanov vigorously denied the accusation, saying it was “a provocation and an attempt to destabilize conditions in the Chechen Republic.”
“I am a politician who has dedicated most of my life to the war against terrorism, and even in this case I am ready to help any justice system, among them Dubai’s,” Mr. Delimkhanov said in a statement released by his spokesman.
He also criticized the United Arab Emirates for giving an entry visa to Mr. Yamadayev, “a criminal who ran from the judicial system in his own country.”
“As regards the dead man, he had enemies all around the world,” the statement said.
Authorities in Dubai released new details about the murder.
General Tamim said the killer had surprised Mr. Yamadayev outside the Jumeirah Beach apartment complex and shot him in the head, then threw away the weapon not far from the crime scene. He said the weapon resembled guns carried by Mr. Delimkhanov’s bodyguards, and that a witness in police custody had said the weapon was given to assassins hired to kill Mr. Yamadayev.
The general was scathing about the spillover of violence outside Russia’s borders.
“Russia must take a strong and powerful step to stop this, to make sure that Chechen dirty payback doesn’t spread outside,” General Tamim said. “We will give Russian authorities the case file. It is up to Russia whether or not to hand” Mr. Delimkhanov to authorities in Dubai, he said.
The police arrested two suspects, an Iranian and a Tajik, shortly after the murder, and four other suspects were in Russia, General Tamim said.
Mr. Delimkhanov, 39, rose under Mr. Kadyrov to become a top Chechen official. After heading the police division that protected Chechen oil facilities, he was appointed deputy prime minister overseeing security forces in 2006. The next year he was appointed to the Russian Parliament as a representative of United Russia, the party headed by Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin. A spokesman for Mr. Delimkhanov described him as “a friend” of the Chechen president.
His name arose in written legal complaints by a Chechen exile, Umar S. Israilov, who was shot to death in Vienna in January. Mr. Israilov described a scene in which Mr. Delimkhanov beat him with a shovel handle in Mr. Kadyrov’s presence. Mr. Delimkhanov declined requests for comment on the allegation.
Michael Schwirtz contributed reporting from Moscow, and an employee of The New York Times from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.