Ibn al-Khattab
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Ibn al-Khattab (ابن الخطاب) (born Saudi Arabia, 1969, died March 20, 2002), more commonly known as Amir Khattab (also transliterated as Emir Khattab and Ameer Khattab), and also known as Habib Abdul Rahman, was a warlord and financier working with Chechen militants in the First Chechen War and the Second Chechen War.
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Afghanistan
The origins and real identity of Khattab remained a mystery to most until after his death, when his brother gave an interview to the press [1]. Khattab's given name is Samir Saleh Abdullah Al-Suwailem, and he was born in 1969 in Saudi Arabia to an Arab father and a Turkish mother.
At the age of 17, Khattab left Saudi Arabia to partipate in the fight against the Soviet Union during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. During this time, he permanently incapacitated his right hand and lost several fingers after an accident with home-made explosives. Supposedly, while in Afghanistan he met with Osama bin Laden and established contacts with members of the future Al-Qaeda. In 1993, Khattab left to fight alongside Islamic fundamentalist opposition in neighboring Tajikistan, but the civil war there ended soon with a ceasefire.
First Chechen War
According to his brother, he first heard about the Chechen conflict on an Afghan television channel in 1995. That same year he entered Russia posing as a television reporter. During the First Chechen War, Khattab participated in fighting Russian forces and acted as an intermediary financier between foreign Islamist funding sources and the local fighters. To help secure funding and spread his own fame, Khattab was frequently accompanied by a crew of two cameramen who videotaped fighting and executions of prisoners of war (reportedly only contract soldiersTemplate:Fact). Sometime during the First Chechen War, Khattab met Shamil Basayev and became his closest ally. He was also associated with Zelimkhan Yanderbiyev.
The Ambush
Khattab gained his early fame and a great notoriety in Russia for his April 1996 devastating ambush and annihilation of a Russian armored military column on a narrow gorge of Yaryshmardy near Shatoi in the south Chechen mountains, that killed 53 servicemen and wounded 52, according to the official Russian figures. According to the other sources, some 100 soldiers of the 245th Motorized Rifle Regiment were killed as the result of the attack, and there were demands in the State Duma for the Russian Defence Minister Pavel Grachev to resign because of it. A video of the aftermath of the battle showed Khattab walking triumphantly down a line of blackened Russian tanks and corpses, and according to him only 4 members of the 50-men ambush force died in the attack, which also killed 223 soldiers with just 3 escaping.
Second Chechen War
After the conclusion of the First Chechen War, Khattab became a prominent warlord and commanded his own militia with a backbone of a small group of Arabs and other foreign fighters who had come to participate in the war. In August 1999, along with Shamil Basayev, Khattab led the rebel incursion into Dagestan, effectively starting the Second Chechen War. During the course of the war, Khattab participated in leading his militia against Russian forces in Chechnya and managing the influx of foreign fighters and money (and, according to the Russian officials, also planning of terrorist attacks and diversions in Russia).
Accusations of Terrorist Attacks
The September 17, 1996, Khattab, accompanied by a group of his armed men, entered the compound of the International Committee of the Red Cross, ( ICRC) hospital in Novye Atagi, Chechnya. Using threats he demanded that ICRC symbols be removed from the ICRC hospital within two days. Latter on a compromise decision was taken to reduce the number of ICRC red crosses in the hospital compound. Nevertheless the 17 December around 3 AM, the ICRC staff suffered the deadliest attack in its history in which six of his members were shot dead and one severely wounded while asleep. The truth about the assassins is still unknown. It is know that the agressors were speaking Chechen.
An FSB investigation named Khattab as the mastermind behind the Russian apartment bombings which occurred in early September 1999. Although Khattab denied involvement, sometime between the 9th and 13th of September he delivers an interview in which he states that “From now on they will get our bombs everywhere. Let Russia await our explosions blasting through their cities. I swear we will do it.” However, on September 14th, Khattab told the Interfax news agency in Grozny that he had nothing to do with the Moscow explosions; he was quoted as saying, “We would not like to be akin to those who kill sleeping civilians with bombs and shells.” [2]
Death and Legacy
Khattab was killed on March 19-20, 2002, when a Dagestani messenger hired by the Russian FSB gave Khattab a poisoned letter (the assassin was later tracked down and shot dead in Azerbaijan).
He has been succeeded in his role as financier-mediator and a leader of foreign fighters (as well as Al-Qaeda envoy) by a man named Amir Abu al-Walid, who was killed in 2004.