Shamil Salmanovich Basayev, also known by his kunya "Abu Idris", was a politician and militant who served as a senior military commander in the breakaway Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. He held the rank of brigadier general in the Armed Forces of Ichkeria, and was posthumously declared generalissimo. As a military commander in the separatist armed forces of Chechnya, one of his most notable battles was the separatist recapture of Grozny in 1996, which he personally planned and commanded together with Aslan Maskhadov. He also masterminded several of Russia's worst terrorist attacks.
The Russian apartment bombings were a series of explosions that hit four apartment blocks in the Russian cities of Buynaksk, Moscow and Volgodonsk in September 1999, killing more than 300, injuring more than 1,000, and spreading a wave of fear across the country. The bombings, together with the Invasion of Dagestan, triggered the Second Chechen War. The handling of the crisis by Vladimir Putin, who was prime minister at the time, boosted his popularity greatly and helped him attain the presidency within a few months.
Black Widow or Shahidka, is a term for Islamist Chechen female suicide bombers, willing to be a manifestation of violent jihad. They became known at the Moscow theater hostage crisis of October 2002. The commander Shamil Basayev referred to the shahidkas as a part of force of his suicide bombers called the Riyad-us Saliheen Brigade of Martyrs. Basayev also stated that he himself trained at least fifty of the Black Widows. The female suicide bombers have carried out over 65% of the 23 terrorist attacks linked to the Chechen movement since 2000. The Black Widows are associated with terrorist attacks in Chechnya between 1999 and 2005.
Operation Crevice was a raid launched by Metropolitan and local police in England on the morning of 30 March 2004. It was in response to a report indicating cells of terrorists of Pakistani origin operating in the Thames Valley, Sussex, Surrey and Bedfordshire areas, the source of which was said to be an interception of an instruction sent from Al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan to militants in Britain. In March 2020 Jonathan Evans, Former Director General, MI5 gave an interview and citing one passage: 'The plot itself, however, appeared to be encouraged and fomented by al-Qa`ida in the tribal areas. It was one of the early ones we saw. It involved predominantly British citizens or British residents of Pakistani heritage, something which became something of a theme for this period'. The operation resulted in five men being found guilty in April 2007 of conspiring to cause explosions likely to endanger life.
Rappani Khalilov, also known as Rabbani, was the militant leader of the Shariat Jamaat of the Caucasian Front during the Second Chechen War, in the volatile southern Russian republic of Dagestan. He was killed on September 17, 2007, in a fierce shoot-out with the Russian special forces.
Terrorism in Russia has a long history starting from the time of the Russian Empire. Terrorism, in the modern sense, means violence against civilians to achieve political or ideological objectives by creating extreme fear.
Vilayat Dagestan, formerly known as Shariat Jamaat, was an Islamist Jihadist group based in the Russian republic of Dagestan and is part of the Caucasus Emirate. The group is closely associated with the separatist conflicts in the nearby Russian republics of Chechnya and Ingushetia, and was created during the Second Chechen War in favor of Dagestan's independence as an Islamic state.
The February 2004 Moscow metro bombing occurred on 6 February 2004 when a male suicide bomber killed 41 people near Avtozavodskaya subway station on the Zamoskvoretskaya Line in Moscow. Up to 250 people were injured in the incident, some of the more common injuries being broken bones and smoke inhalation.
Ilgar Mollachiev, better known as Emir Abdul Madzhid (Majid), was the militant leader of the Shariat Jamaat of the Caucasian Front in the Second Chechen War, in the volatile southern Russian republic of Dagestan. He was the deputy of Rappani Khalilov until Khalilov's death in September 2007. He was then appointed the new leader of the Shariat Jamaat by the orders of Dokka Umarov. His nationality was Tsakhur.
The 2010 Moscow Metro bombings were suicide bombings carried out by two Islamic female terrorists during the morning rush hour of March 29, 2010, at two stations of the Moscow Metro, with roughly 40 minutes in between. At least 40 people were killed, and over 100 injured.
The August 2004 Moscow metro bombing took place at about 20:17 MSK on 31 August 2004, when a female suicide bomber blew herself up outside Rizhskaya metro station, killing at least 10 people and wounding 50.
In December 2013, two separate suicide bombings a day apart targeted mass transportation in the city of Volgograd, in the Volgograd Oblast of Southern Russia, killing 34 people overall, including both perpetrators. The attacks followed a bus bombing carried out in the same city two months earlier.
The Tukhchar massacre was an incident during the War of Dagestan which was filmed and distributed on tape, in which Russian prisoners of war were executed. Throughout the war, Russian soldiers reported finding taped executions of Russian officers and men. Some videos were later sold as snuff films and ended up online. One tape created in September 1999 showed six Russian servicemen, one as young as 19, being executed by Chechen militants. The method was a pierced trachea.
Derbent Jamaat, also known as the Forest Brothers, and the Southern Group, was an Islamist Jihadist group based in the Russian republic of Dagestan, part of the Shariat Jamaat of the Caucasus Emirate. The group had engaged in attacks on law enforcement officers, organized terrorist attacks, distributed Wahhabi literature, and undertook propaganda and agitation activities in Dagestan and the neighboring country of Azerbaijan.
The 1996 Kaspiysk bombing occurred on 16 November 1996 when Chechen terrorists bombed an apartment building in Kaspiysk, Dagestan, killing 68 people.
