Salman Raduyev

Salman Raduyev (or Raduev; Russian: Салма́н Раду́ев; February 13, 1967 – December 14, 2002) was a Chechen separatist warlord considered to be one of the most radical and notorious rebel commanders of the period between 1994 and 1999. Arrested in 2000, he died in a Russian penal colony under mysterious circumstances.

Early life

Raduyev was born in 1967 into the Gordaloy teip (clan) in Novogroznensky near Gudermes in eastern Chechnya. During the early 1980s Raduyev was active in the communist youth league Komsomol of which he eventually became a leader for the whole Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. After attending a high school in Gudermes, Raduyev served 1985-1987 in the Soviet Army as a construction engineer in a Strategic Rocket Forces unit stationed in the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, where he became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. After demobilization, he studied economy and worked in Soviet construction industry.

After Chechnya declared independence, he was appointed the prefect of Gudermes in June 1992 by his father-in-law, Dzhokhar Dudayev, who was the president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. He also married the daughter of Dudayev's cousin.