Terminators

Kidnapping and killing for “national interests”: rules of carrying out secret operations in abroad

Andrei Soldatov, Irina Borogan /Agentura.ru/

Imran Gaziev, deputy chief of the Representative Office of the unrecognized Chechen Republic of Ichkeria in Azerbaijan, was killed in Baku in November. The killer shot as Gaziev was getting out of his car. The gun was left at the crime scene – that’s the gun with silencer of PSM Baikal model. This model was developed in the 70’s for the top brass of the army, but operative services of MVD and KGB got to like it too. The warriors of different antiterrorist units use PSM as auxiliary weapon. Due to its capacity of piercing bullet-proof jackets this gun got known in the West as the “weapon for assassination”.

The attitude to Ichkeria representatives has been different in Azerbaijan these years. There were periods of full support of the separatists, but it also came to closing down their representative office (after hostages capture in Nord Ost). However, in any times the Chechen Diaspora was under close watch by Azerbaijani special services. Any crime against them was solved immediately. But as for murder of Gaziev, ministry of national security of Azerbaijan refrained from any statements and refused even to voice any versions. Our sources in the enforcing structures of the country also shrug their shoulders saying that nothing is known. Along with that, members of local Chechen community say Gaziev was not engaged in criminal activity or business. They also note that tens of Chechen activists have been killed, kidnapped or are missing in Azerbaijan. They point there must be Russian trace in all that.

It seems there is a suggestion of truth in that accusation.

Three months before Gaziev was murdered the Chechen Refugee Commission presented to Azerbaijani National Committee at Helsinki Civic Assembly a list of 12 people who are recognized to be kidnapped on the Azerbaijan territory. One of them was Ruslan Aliev, who got missing in Baku in November 2006 and whose dead body was found in Chechnya in the woods near the settlement of Samashki. The Refugee Commission made a request about the missing to the state bodies of Azerbaijan and they were responded that the listed persons had not passed through customs and passport check.

Chechen Commission considers it that the kidnapped could have been brought out from the country secretly by Russian special services with the connivance of Baku. It’s known that not only Chechen separatists but also FSB agents acted and act in Azerbaijan. In 2002, for example, at the previous President Geidar Aliev, when relations between the two countries were significantly worse than now, five special service officers were caught having false documents and special equipment with them.

Of course, it’s too early to make definite conclusions in relation to Gaziev murder and mysterious cases of missing. However, it cannot be excluded that following killing of Yandarbiev in 2004 a series of special operations has begun in abroad. It seems even more likely, since starting from June 2006 our special services are allowed by the law to carry out operations in abroad. Besides, our sources in FSB confirm that there is an agreement with the law enforcement bodies of Azerbaijan about actions by Russian special units and free passage across the border for them.

If Russian special agencies have taken the road, it would be rather difficult to stop them: European countries haven’t developed yet adequate response to such a tactics. International experience says that, on the contrary, the states who kill their citizens beyond their own frontiers, they always stay unpunished.

Three principles of terminators

It’s not only ayatollah Khomeini who applied the tactics of killing one’s enemies on the other countries’ territories. After coming to power by democratic government, Spain prepared groups of killers targets for which were members of Basque organization ETA.

Iran’s special services left tens of corpses all over Europe, but that caused a very slack reaction by European governments who did not want complicated relations with Iran. The Spanish also terrorized Basque community in France and the result was even more successful – Paris agreed to recognize ETA members to be terrorists and began to extradite them to Spain.

When in 1975 Franco died who was not distinguished of love for fellow-men, and ETA did not stop its operations, the brutal methods were substituted for even more brutal ones. Spanish democrats invented “death squads” that acted on the French territory.

The first war by death squads against ETA dates back to 1978-1981. That time the operations were carried out by Batallion Vasco Espanol. During the second war of 1983-1987 it was Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberacion, or GAL, who killed 27 people. It’s about that time that Spanish created the main principles of terminating in abroad.

The first one is the use of hired killers. GAL hired former SAR* vets, former vets of the Foreign Legion or just bandits. It got known after some of them were caught in the act by the French police.

Paddy Woodworth, the author of the book “Dirty War, Clean Hands. ETA, GAL and Spanish Democracy”, argues that the reason was the Spanish police wanted to be dissociated from the terminators in case of failure. Besides, the police units acting against ETA were quite corrupted. They realized quickly that use of hired killers enabled them to make fortunes on cash: they asked hundred of thousands for carrying out operations and finally they used the killers ready to murder for a couple of hundreds.

The second principle is that the target must be not only terrorists but also common people. Woodworth says GAL units carried out two kinds of operations: pointed killings of particular ETA members and exampling actions like shooting everyone who happened to be within reach in bars. The Spanish had set the task of making terror atmosphere in the French Basque country to antagonize the local population against ETA.

The third principle, known as “there is no need to be aware” was invented in S.Africa during apartheid times. As Woodworth told to a Novaya Gazeta correspondent, that principle meant in Spain that the police and special service Guardia Civil did not make the country’s leadership aware of the details. This is why the Spanish Prime Minister Philipe Gonzales was not convicted for the crimes done during his term of office: there was no evidence that he had known about them.

Same principles were applied by Iranians. As Meir Javedanfar, expert for Iranian special services, told to a Novaya Gazeta correspondent, the chief of Iranian intelligence service began to hire criminal expatriates Lebanon as far back as 1980, i.e. at the very beginning of activities by Iranian death squads.

As for Russia, the principle “there is no need to be aware” has been perfectly known to our authorities since the first Chechen war and the advantage of using hired killers became obvious after scandalous murder of Yandarbiev in Qatar. Obviously, if it had been not regular officers then, the international political damage would have been much less significant.

Impunity as a rule without exceptions made

Even that murder of Yandarbiev confirmed that such a tactics remains unpunished practically always. Well, in Qatar case one may mention the trend by Arabic world to reach compromise with Russia, but what can we say about reaction by Great Britain to Litvinenko murder?

16 May this year the hearings were held in the British House of Commons dedicated to the topic “Global Security: Russia”. The questions were put this way: will Russia be using energy in reaching its political goals, considering the expansion by Gazprom, and has the political situation changed because of Litvinenko case and “scandal with the stone”? **

MPs came to a conclusion that British businessmen and militaries are consented with collaboration with Russia and want to continue it, but there are problems in the political sphere. That’s why Great Britain should separate political relations, with more problems appearing there, and economic ones where the situation must get better as the British business is interested in it.

After that, as it is remembered, loud statements by British government followed. Though, British reaction was limited within political sphere: the prosecutor’s office called Lugovoi to be performer of the murder, but failed to point in whose interests and by whose order he acted. Actions against Russia were restricted to deportation of Russian diplomats (and the proportionate response was given to that) and dissolution of rather useless joint group on struggle against terror that had had its meetings as often as once a year. And the British Prime Minister restricts himself to feeble complains about refusing by Russia to extradite Lugovoi.