Decision to Revive Akhmad Kadyrov Murder Probe Overturned

The investigation committee of the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office on April 16 overruled a decision by one of its subdivisions to resume a probe into the May 2004 assassination of then Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov, father of the republic’s current president. As RIA Novosti reported, the investigation committee of the Southern Federal District Prosecutor’s Office had announced earlier in the day that it had resumed a probe into the May 9 explosion that killed the elder Kadyrov during a Victory Parade marking the end of World War Two at the Chechen capital’s Dinamo Stadium.

The decision to reopen the investigation “was declared groundless and premature, and was revoked,” the investigation committee of the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office said in an April 16 statement. As RIA Novosti noted, the probe was resumed at the request of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, who said last week he was “70 percent” certain that Sulim Yamadaev, the former Vostok special operations battalion commander who was murdered in Dubai on March 28, had played a role in his father’s assassination. Kadyrov also claimed that Yamadaev plotted to kill him on the day he was inaugurated as Chechnya’s president, February 15, 2007, by poisoning a lake at his residence.

The announcement by the investigation committee of the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office that it had revoked the decision by its Southern Federal District branch to reopen the Akhmad Kadyrov murder investigation suggests that there may still be some resistance at the upper reaches of federal power to the policy of giving Kadyrov free rein in Chechnya.