Turkey arrests two members of a network for assassinating Chechen dissidents

Turkey’s security forces arrested two more people who they thought were part of a spy network planning to kill a Chechen political rebel in Turkey on Ramzan Kadyrov’s orders.

Six spies were arrested by the Turkish police on October 8 as part of a probe started by the Istanbul Prosecutor’s Office.

Saeed Muhammed Abdullah and Shorokh Akhmedov were arrested by police on November 2 in the Muratpasa district of Antalya and in Esenyurt in Istanbul.

A report said that Abdullah was gathering information on Chechen activists in Turkey, while Akhmetov was working with Beslan Rasayev, who was in charge of the spy network.

The government-friendly newspaper “Sabah” says that before the network was revealed, five spies—three Russians, one Ukrainian, and one Uzbek—planned to kill “Abdul Hakim,” a Chechen dissident who lived in Turkey and fought with the opposition in Syria against the Bashar al-Assad regime.

Turkish intelligence says that Kazbek Dokuzov and Adam Delimkhanov, a member in the State Duma and cousin of Chechen leader Kadyrov and also wanted by Interpol, gave orders to Beslan Rasayev, who was in charge of the secret network.

Since 2004, Dukuzov has given orders to kill four Chechen activists in Europe.

On October 21, the official TRT News said that six people were being held in jail while they wait to be tried for a plan against Chechen activists in Turkey.

It was also said that the suspects were being held on charges of “political and military spying” and that they were planning “armed actions and espionage” against Chechen opposition members.

The espionage charge in Turkey is punishable by 15 to 20 years in jail.