Chechen Prosecutor's Office: military inspectors to take Sulim Yamadaev's case now

Further investigation of the criminal cases initiated against former commander of the "Vostok" battalion of the 42nd Motorized Rifle Division of the Ministry of Defence of Russia Lieutenant Colonel Sulim Yamadaev will be held by military investigatory bodies.

Let us note here that according to Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, Sulim Yamadaev is hiding from investigation in Moscow.

"As to Sulim Yamadaev, the Gudermes Inter-District Investigatory Division was investigating three criminal cases, namely, the criminal case opened on the murder in 1998 of Batsiev, a resident of Dzhalka village, Gudermes District, in which Yamadaev was a defendant; and two others cases - on detection of an identified man's body in 2003 and disappearances of certain Musliev in 2002," the "Interfax" was told today by the spokesman of the Investigatory Department of the Investigatory Committee at the Prosecutor's Office (ICPO) of the Russian Federation for the Chechen Republic.

According to the spokesman, "on the second and third cases against Sulim Yamadaev evidences were given on his involvement in these crimes, therefore in these cases he was a suspect."

Now all the three criminal cases are under the ICPO, and the Committee plans to send them to the military investigatory bodies for further investigation and decision-making.

The "Echo Moskvy" Radio reports that today a special group was sent to Moscow from Chechnya with a mission to arrest the ex-commander of the "Vostok" battalion Sulim Yamadaev, however, as Yamadaev himself said in his interview to the "Novaya Gazeta", "their task is not to take him alive."