Basayev - VII

The Chechenpress website has published a very long, previously unpublished interview with Shamil Basayev, in Russian. According to an announcement at the site, the interview was originally requested in late September 2004 in a message to the Kavkaz Center website (now closed) by the journalist Mark MacKinnon of the Canadian daily newspaper The Globe and Mail, who put the newspaper's questions to Basayev. Kavkaz Center replied that they could not contact Basayev directly, but could forward MacKinnon's questions to one of Basayev's aides by email. Basayev's replies were sent as a letter to The Globe and Mail, which forwarded it to MacKinnon's address. 11 days later on 25 October MacKinnon told the editors of Kavkaz Center that before publishing the interview The Globe and Mail wanted some confirmation of its authenticity. The KC editors replied that they had been receiving messages from Basayev through his aide for the past four years, and so the latest message/interview was also authentic. They also said that if the newspaper did not publish the interview within three days, it would lose the exclusive rights to it. Now the Chechenpress site has published the interview, which contains an account of Basayev's injuries, his self-medication and diet. Also of some of his military strategic plans and thinking, his disagreement with Maskhadov, his trip to Afghanistan in 1994, and so on. He claims that Maskhadov lived for three months with a cousin of Kadyrov in Gudermes, on Kadyrov's money, while Kadyrov was searching for him elsewhere.

It's possible that a translation of the interview will appear in the near future, in which case I'll try to reproduce excerpts - if not the whole thing - here.

Update: Marius has provided some translated excerpts from the interview here.