The bloodiest incident by far was the September 2004 Beslan hostage crisis, in which Chechen insurgents attributed to Shamil Basayev ( who alternatingly denied and claimed responsibility ) seized control of a school.

Basayev further said an FSB agent ( Khodov ) had been sent undercover to the rebels to persuade them to carry out an attack on a target in North Ossetia's capital, Vladikavkaz, and that the group was allowed to enter the region with ease because the FSB planned to capture them at their destination in Vladikavkaz.

" Udugov and Basayev ," he asserted, " conspired with Stepashin and Putin to provoke a war to topple Maskhadov ... but the agreement was for the Russian army to stop at the Terek River.

Basayev was tracked via the surveillance of this arms trafficking.

In July 2006, Chechen militant Islamist Shamil Salmanovich Basayev, responsible for the 2002 Moscow theater hostage crisis that led to 129 civilian deaths and the 2004 Beslan school hostage crisis that led to 385 deaths, was killed in the village of Ekazhevo, in Ingushetia.

Shamil Salmanovich Basayev (; 14 January 1965 – 10 July 2006 ) was a Chechen militant Islamist and a leader of the Chechen rebel movement.

Basayev was considered by some to be the undisputed leader of the radical wing of the Chechen insurgency.

Basayev was killed by an explosion on 10 July 2006.

Shamil Basayev was born in the village of Dyshne-Vedeno, near Vedeno, in south-eastern Chechnya to Chechen parents from the Benoy teip.

In later interviews, Taramov would claim he hired Basayev as a favor for a family friend, and that the latter was an ineffectual worker who would spend whole nights playing video games, sleep during the day, and had an obsession with Che Guevara.

It was then that Basayev began his long and notorious career as an insurgent — seeking to draw international attention to the crisis.

Basayev, Lom-Ali Chachayev, and the group's leader, Said-Ali Satuyev, a former airline pilot suffering from schizophrenia, hijacked an Aeroflot Tu-154 plane, en route from Mineralnye Vody in Russia to Ankara on November 9, 1991, and threatened to blow up the aircraft unless the state of emergency was lifted.

Basayev was said to be one of the last fighters to leave Shusha ( see Capture of Shusha ).

During the conflict, Basayev was first introduced to the pan-Islamic revolutionary Ibn al-Khattab.

The Russian government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta reported that Basayev was an agent of GRU, and another publication by journalist Boris Kagarlitsky said that " It is maintained, for example that Shamil Basayev and his brother Shirvani are long-standing GRU agents, and that all their activities were agreed, not with the radical Islamists, but with the generals sitting in the military intelligence offices.

In 1991, Basayev was directed by GRU agents, and he praised the Russian GRU's " professionalism " and " courage ", during his war against the Georgians.

Yandarbiyev stood in the presidential election held in Chechnya in February 1997, but was defeated by the Chechen separatist top military leader, General Aslan Maskhadov, getting 10 per cent of the votes and landing third behind Maskhadov and Shamil Basayev.

On October 13, 2005, Nalchik was attacked by a large group of Yarmuk Jamaat militants led by Shamil Basayev and Anzor Astemirov.

In an interview with Echo Moskvy, in which she was discussing the 2008 South Ossetia War, Novodvorskaya said that Shamil Basayev was a democrat, given his support of Boris Yeltsin during the 1991 Soviet coup d ' état attempt and his participation in the government of Aslan Maskhadov in 1997, who had appointed Basayev Deputy Premier of the Ichkerian government.

According to her, it was Russian governmental policies in Chechnya that turned Basayev into a terrorist.

Later, Basayev said there was also an alternative option: if President Putin submitted a letter of resignation, the hostage-takers would " release all the children and go back to Chechnya with others.

He was possibly the militant known only as " Fantomas ", an ethnic Russian who served as a bodyguard to Shamil Basayev ).

In 2006, the FSB scored a major success in its counter-terrorist efforts when it successfully killed Shamil Basayev, the mastermind behind the Beslan tragedy and several other high-profile terrorist acts.

Basayev and other militants were preparing to carry out a terrorist attack in Ingushetia when FSB agents destroyed their convoy ; 12 militants were killed.

According to Basayev, the road to Beslan was cleared of roadblocks because the FSB planned to ambush the group later, believing the rebels ' aim was to seize the parliament of North Ossetia in Vladikavkaz.

In 2006, he was incorrectly reported as being killed by the FSB operation that allegedly killed Shamil Basayev.

A GRU agent, Anton Surikov, had extensive connections with Basayev.

Long after the war, Basayev praised the professionalism and courage of his Russian trainers in Abkhazia — praise that led some of his enemies in Grozny, even President Maskhadov, to later call him a " longtime GRU agent "

The hostage-takers were the Riyadus-Salikhin Battalion, sent by the Chechen separatist warlord Shamil Basayev, who demanded an end to the Second Chechen War and Russian withdrawal from Chechnya.

In July 2007, one year after Shamil Basayev ’ s death, Taziev became his official successor as the most high-ranking military commander in the rebel forces.

The Kavkaz Center caused a major controversy in September 2004 when the server it was being hosted on, located in Lithuania, was shut down by Lithuanian authorities ( under pressure from Russian secret services ) on hate speech charges, after a letter from the Chechen rebel commander Shamil Basayev claiming responsibility for the Beslan school hostage crisis and a series of photos from the preparations for the attack were published on the site.

Shortly following Maskhadov's death on 8 March 2005, the Chechen rebel council announced that Sadulayev had assumed Maskhadov's position, a move that was quickly endorsed by Shamil Basayev, the Chechens ' highest-profile guerrilla commander.

Later in 1992, Basayev traveled to Abkhazia, a breakaway region of Georgia, to assist the local separatist movement against the Georgian government's attempts to regain control of the region — a conflict in which, ultimately, a minority of 93, 000 Abkhaz were successful in ethnically purging a majority of Georgians ( numbering some 250, 000 ) from the region.

As a result, both the city mayor and military commander were killed ; a number of other prominent separatist leaders were also killed or wounded, including Shamil Basayev and several hundred rank-and-file militants.

Military commander Shamil Basayev posted a statement on his website claiming ultimate responsibility for the incident, resigning all official positions within the Chechen government and promising new attacks.

Basayev defended the hostage-taking for giving " all Russians a first-hand insight into all the charms of the war unleashed by Russia and take it back to where it originated from " and said that his next " main goal will be destroying the enemy and exacting maximum damage " and " the next time, those who come won't make any demands, won't take hostages.

GRU is " one of the primary instructors of terrorists worldwide " according to Lunev Terrorist Shamil Basayev reportedly worked for this organization.

:* Shamil Basayev: Chechen warlord given Decline as a gift by a Russian radio journalist.

::" He is a notorious terrorist, and we have very clearly and publicly announced what is going to happen to notorious terrorists who commit heinous crimes of the type Mr. Basayev has been involved in.

Starting as a field commander in the Transcaucasus, Basayev led guerrilla campaigns against Russian forces for years, as well as launching mass-hostage takings of civilians, with his goal being the withdrawal of Russian soldiers from Chechnya.

Beginning in 2003, Basayev used the nom de guerre and title of Emir Abdallah Shamil Abu-Idris.

When some hardline members of Soviet government attempted to stage a coup d ' état in August 1991, Basayev allegedly joined supporters of Russian President Boris Yeltsin on the barricades around the Russian White House in central Moscow, armed with hand grenades.

Basayev and several hundred other Chechens have been accused of training in Al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan or Pakistan.

Rohan Gunaratna, has made allegations that Basayev, along other leading militants such as Ibn Al-Khattab and Walid have all had close relations with Osama bin Laden, and they have, in turn, set up terrorist camps in Chechnya.