Ibn al-Khattab

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Emir Ibn al-Chattab ( Arabic ابن الخطاب, DMG Ibn al-Ḫaṭṭāb ; born in 1969 in Arar , Saudi Arabia as Habib Abd ar-Rahman ; also known as Samir Salih Abdullah as-Suwailim  /سامر صالح عبد الله السويلم; died on March 19, 2002 in Chechnya ) was an Islamist field commander. He was active in the fight against Soviet and Russian armed forces, initially in the Afghan war , since 1993 in the civil war in Tajikistan and from 1995 in the Chechnya and Dagestan wars .

Youth and Struggle in Afghanistan

He came from a Saudi Arabian family of Circassian origin, but grew up in Saudi Arabia near the border with Iraq . His teachers described him as religious and highly intelligent. After graduating from school in 1986, his parents wanted to send him to the United States to study . However, Chattab decided to go to Afghanistan, where he fought together with Arab Islamists against the Soviet occupation . He was trained on Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda base .

In the partisan struggle against the Soviet Union, he is said to have acted unusually resolute. After the Soviet withdrawal, he attended various Koran schools , from which the Taliban emerged . Saudi Arabia therefore refused to allow him to return home.

Fight in Tajikistan and Chechnya

In 1993 he went to Tajikistan and fought in the civil war there. He also fought in Azerbaijan . In the spring of 1995 he moved to Chechnya. He led around 500 Muslim supporters, founded a training camp and allied himself with the Chechen fighter Shamil Basayev , who, like him, had been trained in a bin Laden camp in Afghanistan.

Chattab's well-trained unit initially focused on attacks against Russian troops, which they lured into ambushes. In 1998 and 1999 they attacked villages in Dagestan from Chechnya and subsequently declared them an Islamic area . It was to become the nucleus of an Islamic caliphate in the Caucasus . The Dagestani population resisted and Russian troops intervened. The roughly three-week Dagestan War gave rise to the Second Chechen War .

With enormous financial support and preachers from Arab countries, Chattab managed to win over young Chechens to fundamentalist beliefs. In Chechnya, videos became popular showing Chattab decapitating opposing spies by hand. Between 1996 and 1999, Chattab and Basayev introduced Sharia law in Chechnya.

Death by poison

Chattab died on March 19, 2002 from a poisoned letter presented to him by Ibragim Alauri, a messenger recruited by agents of the Russian domestic secret service, FSB . The letter had been prepared with a fast-acting neurotoxin, probably sarin . Alauri is said to have been murdered later. Many of his supporters left Chechnya and have been fighting in Iraq ever since. B. the former general Abu Omar . Abu l-Walid followed him as the successor to the anti-Russian resistance.

Statements and positions

When asked for his views on the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks , Chattab replied that the primary reason was US foreign policy. He stated that in the eyes of the entire world, Israelis were killing Muslims, occupying their countries and not acting according to United Nations resolutions, while America was supporting Israel.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b BBC: Obituary for Ibn al-Chattab (en)
  2. ^ Ian R Kenyon: The chemical weapons convention and OPCW: the challenges of the 21st century . In: Harvard Sussex Program on CBW Armament and Arms Limitation (Ed.): The CBW Conventions Bulletin . No. 56, June 2002, p. 47.
  3. ↑ "Who Ordered Khattab's Death?" ( Memento dated June 25, 2011 on WebCite ), Jamestown Foundation, quoting Russian press sources
personal data
SURNAME Chattab, Ibn al-
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Abd ar-Rahman, Habib (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Saudi Arabian terrorist
DATE OF BIRTH 1969
PLACE OF BIRTH Arar, Saudi Arabia
DATE OF DEATH March 19, 2002
Place of death Chechnya