Dokka Umarov
[13] Doku Umarov was born in April 1964 in the small village of Kharsenoi (Kharsenoy) in the southern Shatoysky District region of the Chechen–Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, into what he described as an intelligentsia family[14] belonging the Malkoy teip (the same clan as the warlord Arbi Barayev and Chechnya's former foreign minister Ilyas Akhmadov).[21][25] In August 2005, Umarov's sister, Natalia Khumaidova, was abducted in the Chechen town of Urus-Martan;[23][26] she was released days later, after local residents protesting for her return rallied and blocked a federal highway.[27] However, Umarov was forced to resign from this post, and the council was disbanded due to his failure to stabilise the situation in Chechnya and persistent rumors of his alleged participation in the practice of taking hostages for ransom (possibly in relationship with Arbi Barayev,[16] who was widely accused of being a kidnapper).[15][27] After his convalescence (including undergoing extensive plastic surgery[14]), Umarov raised and led a militia force in Georgia's remote Pankisi Gorge before his return to Chechnya in the summer of 2002.Back in Chechnya, Umarov became the replacement of Isa Munayev on the post of the commander of Southwestern Front (comprising an estimated 1,000 fighters by 2004[29]), the military region southwest of Grozny that bordered on Georgia and Ingushetia.[29][30] In 2003, Umarov led his men in the heavy fighting around the town of Shatoy and, according to the Russian sources, ordered the bombing of Ingushetia's FSB headquarters in the Ingush capital of Magas and the attack on electrical infrastructure facilities in the city of Kislovodsk in Stavropol Krai.The next summer, together with Basayev, Umarov was one of the leaders of a large-scale raid by Chechen and Ingush fighters that killed scores of Ingushetia's officials and members of the security forces and briefly seized control over the republic's largest town, Nazran.In September, the MVD announced it had found "Umarov's grave", and the following month, in October, he was once again falsely reported dead in the rebel raid on Nalchik, the capital city of Kabardino-Balkaria.[28] In April 2005, Russian special forces destroyed a small guerrilla unit during a battle in a residential area of Grozny after receiving intelligence that Umarov was with them, yet he was not found among the dead.In his first published comments since assuming the role of president, Umarov vowed to expand the conflict to "many regions of Russia", praised his predecessor Sadulayev, indicated that a special unit was being formed to fight Chechnya's "most odious traitors" (a remark believed to refer to pro-Moscow Chechen leaders) and stressed that Chechen fighters and their allies would attack only military and police targets within Russia, including in the newly declared Urals and Volga Region Fronts.[16] On 18 August 2006, Umarov was falsely announced to have surrendered at the Gudermes residence of Ramzan Kadyrov, the Russian-backed leader of Chechnya, under a Russian amnesty provision enacted after Basayev's death."[38] On 23 November 2006, large numbers of Defense Ministry and FSB troops, without the participation of Chechen police,[39] supported by helicopters and artillery barrages,[40] were reported to have surrounded Umarov and his forces in a forest near the village of Yandi-Katar in the Achkhoy-Martanovsky District, on the internal border between Ingushetia and Chechnya.He spent the winter months traveling across the mountains to the nearby republic of Kabardino-Balkaria to meet with local jamaats fighting Russian authorities in the region and consolidate the Caucasian Front, the pan-Caucasian Islamic militant network set up by Sadulayev.[41] In April 2007, a group of fighters that might have been personally led by Umarov shot down a special forces helicopter with the Spetsnaz GRU troops near Shatoy, killing at least 18 Russian soldiers.Zakayev, living in exile in London, called upon all separatist fighters and politicians to pledge allegiance directly to the Chechen parliament in an attempt to isolate his former subordinate from power.On 1 August 2010, the Russian Islamist website Kavkaz Center claimed Umarov had officially announced his resignation for health reasons and appointed his military deputy Aslambek Vadalov as his successor.[70] In another statement in 2004 Umarov wrote: "Our targets are the Russian occupation forces, their military bases, command headquarters and also their local collaborationists who pursue and kill peaceful Muslims."[51] In December 2009, the Caucasus Emirate (via Kavkaz Center) took responsibility for the derailment of Nevsky Express, an "act of sabotage" which claimed the lives of 28 people (including government officials and Russian business executives), reportedly ordered by him personally.[67][72] In January 2010, in a statement about the upcoming "military actions", Umarov said the re-created Riyad-us-Saliheen Brigade of Martyrs will now operate in the Russian cities outside the Caucasus and "the war will come to their homes", possibly indicating the new wave of bombings such as those conducted by the group in Moscow and elsewhere in 2002–2004 under Basayev's orders.[83] In March 2008, Chechnya's chief prosecutor, Valery Kuznetsov, launched a criminal case against Umarov for "inciting inter-ethnic hatred and calling for the overthrow of the Russian government on the Internet" (the penalty for this being just a fine of up to 500,000 rubles and a ban on holding management positions).According to Kommersant, Umarov was earlier on Russia's wanted list, but all the previous and much more serious charges against him (involvement in acts of terrorism, kidnappings for ransom, murders and robberies) were suspended in 2005.[86] Since 10 March 2011, Umarov has been on the United Nations Security Council's Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee list of individuals allegedly associated with al-Qaeda and the Taliban for "participating in the financing, planning, facilitating, preparing, or perpetrating of acts or activities by, in conjunction with, under the name of, on behalf of, or in support of, recruiting for, supplying, selling or transferring arms and related materiel to and otherwise supporting acts or activities of" his own organizations (the Caucasus Emirate and its Brigade of Martyrs suicide attack wing) as well as Uzbekistan's Islamic Jihad Union and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan."[88] On 8 April 2014, the director of the Russian Federal Security Service Alexander Bortnikov confirmed the earlier announcement of Kavkaz Center made on 18 March of the same year about Umarov's death.According to the website, "Suspects may be removed from the RFJ list for a variety of reasons, including when they are taken into custody by law enforcement or security forces, or are confirmed dead by an official authoritative source.[68][92] In 2006, responding to Russian claims that he was an Islamic extremist, he described himself as a "traditionalist" and said: Umarov denied that Chechen separatism is linked to al-Qaeda or any other international jihadi groups, saying that the rebels' priority is liberty and independence from Russia and peace for the Caucasus.