Dubai police make first arrests over warlord murder

Mr Yamadayev was a former rebel turned pro-Moscow officer, who had fallen out with Chechnya’s president Ramzan Kadyrov and had been living quietly in Dubai for the past few months. He was shot dead in the underground car park of a luxury residential development on 28 March.

“The leads in the case indicate that a top official in the Chechen government named Adam Delimkhanov, who is the deputy prime minister in Chechnya, is the mastermind behind Sulim Yamadayev's assassination,” police chief, Lieutenant General Dhahi Khalfan Tamim, said yesterday.

While human rights groups and opponents of Mr Kadyrov have frequently alleged wide-scale rights abuses in Chechnya, this is the first time that a foreign country has directly accused someone so close to the Chechen president of organising an assassination.

Dubai police said they had arrested two men, including one Iranian, who they believed carried out the hit, but said the crime was planned in Chechnya. The murder was carried out with a Russian-made, gold-coloured handgun, they said. “The crime ... is 100 percent of Chechen making and it’s an operation of settling accounts (among Chechens),” Mr Tamim said.

The authorities will put out arrest warrants for four other people, and will seek the extradition of Mr Delimkhanov.

A close ally of the Chechen President, Mr Delimkhanov is both deputy prime minister of Chechnya and a member of Russia’s Duma, where he represents the pro-Kremlin United Russia party.

It is not the first time that his name has been mentioned in connection with controversial allegations. Earlier this year, a former bodyguard of Mr Kadyrov accused the Chechen president and Mr Delimkhanov of personally torturing prisoners. Umar Israilov, who had fled to Vienna, said Mr Delimkhanov had beaten him with a shovel handle. He was later shot dead on the streets of Vienna in mid-January.

The latest allegations are also likely to be extremely embarrassing for the Kremlin, coming as Russia is seeking to portray Chechnya as a peaceful place where the terrorist threat has been removed and Mr Kadyrov’s government is returning life to normal.

Mr Delimkhanov is the second member of the Russian Duma to be wanted in another country for murder. Andrei Lugovoi, whom British authorities suspect was behind the murder of Alexander Livinenko in London, was elected to the Duma in late 2007.