Accounts differ of how Maskhadov died

First reports about Ichkeria President Aslan Maskhadov's death were received in the afternoon on 8 March 2005. He was killed in the course of a successful special operation conducted by Russia's security services 15 kilometres north of Grozny in Doykur-Aul (Tolstoy-Yurt), Grozny district, Chechnya, according to official information.

"The Ichkeria leader was hiding in Tolstoy-Yurt, in the cellar of the house of his relative, Yusupov, on Suvorov Street. There were three people hiding with him: Vakhid Murdashev, the former head of Maskhadov's personnel department, Murdashev's nephew Viskhan, and Iriskhanov, a rebel who was close to him. Those three agreed to surrender and went out of the cellar, but Maskhadov refused to do so and was killed when the special force blew up his shelter," an officer at the Chechen military commandant's office said.

The house was searched, which lead to finding some weapons, several radio stations, a printer, an Ichkeria flag, and Aslan Maskhadov's personal belongings, the officer said. The military has no doubt the killed man was indeed Maskhadov.

Meanwhile, people in Chechnya doubt it was in Tolstoy-Yurt Aslan Maskhadov was killed. "This village, though rather big, is in the flat part, in the north of the republic. There are neither large forests nor mountain gorges where one could hide. Besides, Maskhadov could not be almost alone in this area. As for reports that he wanted personally to lead an attack on military and civil targets in this village, they are just rumours spread by special services," a 52-year-old lecturer at a Chechen higher education institution says.

Some sources say Aslan Maskhadov was killed by the security service of the Chechen president in the Southeast of Chechnya a few days earlier. A large-scale special operation has been underway there in the past few days, carried out by local law enforcement and security agencies under the personal command of Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya's First Deputy Prime Minister. The operation to neutralise rebels took place in Chechnya's Nozhay-Yurt and Vedeno districts.

Local analysts believe the fact that Ramzan Kadyrov was the first to announce Maskhadov's death (in doing so, he said it was one of his bodyguards who killed him while "carelessly handling arms") indicates it is Kadyrov's people who may have killed the president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. The decision to let federal forces have the fame of killing the Chechen separatist leader may have been made for fear of possible vendetta on the part of Maskhadov's relatives.