MOSCOW, September 27. /TASS/. The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) has confirmed recovery of the remains of North Caucasian terrorist leader Doku Umarov in Ingushetia, who was killed in a special operation at the end of 2013, the FSB Public Relations Center reported.
"As a result of purposive, longstanding sweep operations in the mountain-woody area of the Ingushetia Region, the Russian Federal Security Service has recovered the burial of North Caucasian crime leader Doku Umarov and four members of his gang killed in a special operation organized by law enforcement agencies in September 2013," the FSB Public Relations Center reported.
Umarov headed the Caucasus Emirate terrorist organization (recognized as terrorist and outlawed by the decision of the Russian Supreme Court as of February 8, 2010 - TASS) and acted in close contact with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (terror organizations outlawed in Russia) emissaries. The FSB Public Relations Center reiterated that Umarov "together with Shamil Basaev, who had been killed in 2006, was a direct organizer of the 1999 Dagestan attack and a series of sabotage and terror attacks on the territory of the Russian Federation conducted by members of armed gangs in transport infrastructure facilities and in crowded public places in the period from 2003 to 2013 that caused mass casualties."
In December 2013, Chechnya’s head Ramzan Kadyrov stated at a TASS press conference that Umarov is, most probably, dead. Evidence of Umarov’s death emerged in January 2014 after talks between gang leaders in the Kabardino-Balkaria and Dagestan Regions had been intercepted: They discussed election of a new ‘emir’ due to Umarov’s death. Kadyrov stated there was 99% confidence that Umarov had been killed in a special operation and the intercepted talks proved it.
In April 2014, FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov confirmed that Doku Umarov was dead. Speaking at a meeting of the National Anti-Terror Committee, he noted that activity of the Caucasus Emirate’s leader Umarov had been neutralized due to the held operations. Doku Umarov has been on the search list on the charges of terror attacks, abductions, killings and other grave crimes. In particular, he claimed responsibility for the 2009 Nevsky Express bombing which killed 28 people and terror attacks in the Moscow metro that took the lives of 40 people.
According to investigators, a terror attack in Moscow’s Domodedovo International Airport on January 24, 2011, which killed 35 people, was carried out on his order. The US Department of State and the UN Security Council put Umarov on the list of the most dangerous international terrorists.