The Chechen separatist leader Akhmed Zakayev has said he is not surprised by an alleged plot to kill him in London, and claimed that the Russian government is still actively trying to eliminate its "enemies" abroad, including in the UK.
In an interview with the Guardian, Zakayev said he still felt safe in Britain, despite MI5's assessment that he is on a hitlist drawn up by Chechnya's president, Ramzan Kadyrov.
Zakayev is under 24-hour protection from Scotland Yard. "Do I have any choice?" he asked. He said he was given round-the-clock security following the polonium murder of his close friend Alexander Litvinenko. "It's been like this since 2006," he said.
The alleged plot against Zakayev emerged at an appeal hearing last month. The home secretary is trying to deport a 45-year-old Chechen known as E1, after the security services said he posed a "serious threat to Zakayev's life" as well as to national security. Twelve days ago the appeal court allowed E1 to stay in Britain while he attempted to overturn Theresa May's decision to exclude him.
The Chechen is understood to be a close associate of Zakayev. During the first 1994-96 Chechen war, E1 was one of 12 bodyguards to Alsan Maskhadov, the military leader of the Chechen independence movement. E1 fought against the Russians, was wounded twice, and after the war became deputy commander of Maskhadov's presidential guard.
Maskahadov sent him to Britain in 1999. Soon afterwards, Vladimir Putin launched the second Chechen war. E1 claimed asylum in the UK and worked as Maskhadov's emissary, with his family joining him in 2002. During this period he was a frequent visitor to Zakayev's north London home.
In 2008 E1 left Britain and returned to Chechnya. Here he appears to have swapped sides and joined Kadyrov, who is accused of numerous human rights abuses and is a close ally of Putin.
MI5 and the US state department believe Kadyrov is behind a string of assassinations of Chechen exiles in Europe and the Gulf. Zakayev is believed to be on a blacklist of enemies whom Kadyrov "wished to have assassinated", they say.
According to court documents, MI5 claims E1 also played a significant role in the murder of Umar Israilov, a young Chechen emigre shot dead on the streets of Vienna in 2009.
One possibility is that Kadryov recruited E1 specifically to get close to Zakayev. A former member of his inner circle, E1 is said to have lived just down the road from Zakayev's and Litvinenko's homes, and had knowledge of Zakeyev's movements and security arrangements. The mere fact of his survival in Chechnya suggests he may have cut a deal with the authorities there; other former rebels who went back have disappeared.
Zakayev acknowledged he was the last commander from the first Chechen war still alive. A new, younger generation of explicitly Islamist radicals is battling the Kremlin and its local proxies across the North Caucasus. "I'm ready for a long time that something might happen to me because this is official Russian policy," he said. A law passed in the Duma in 2006 permits state enemies to be killed on foreign soil. He added: "For the past 12 years Putin has steered Russia in a gangster direction. He first used these methods in Chechnya, and then in Russia. He's now exporting them abroad. Putin considers England to be an unfriendly country. He is happy to damage its reputation while the Olympics take place."
Zakayev said he suspected Moscow's involvement in the attempted murder of German Gorbuntsov, a Russian banker shot by a hitman outside his flat in Canary Wharf two weeks ago. Gorbuntsov fled to Britain in 2010 after falling out with business partners and shadowy mafia figures linked to senior Russian officials. "Gorbuntsov was an economic enemy. He wanted to exit from this criminal world," Zakayev said.
E1's case and the Gorbuntsov shooting raise difficult questions for the British government, which is keen to reset relations with Russia but faces the prospect of again dealing with a prickly President Putin. Putin took the refusal of British courts to extradite Zakayev – accused by Moscow of terrorism – as a personal insult. Putin has, however, indicated he will visit London for the Olympics.
On Wednesday Denis MacShane, the former Labour Europe minister, said in the Independent that Britain should publish the names of Russians linked to political killings. "The Russian security-business state thinks it can carry out authorised killings on foreign soil, particularly in Londongrad," he said.
E1's wife and six children are still in Britain. They were granted British citizenship in 2009. E1 was given indefinite leave to remain, later cancelled by the Home Office. His case was initially heard by the special immigration appeals commission. The case was passed to another court, with MI5 spelling out its concerns in an open statement. Last month three judges granted E1 the right to appeal against his deportation, with the next hearing unlikely to take place until next year.
The Kremlin has dismissed talk of a plot against Zakayev, a former actor who is prime minister of the "Chechen Republic of Ichkeria", the unrecognised separatist state. Kadyrov's spokesman described the plot as "nonsense" and a "clumsy put-up show", according to the news agency Interfax. The spokesman added: "Maybe someone in London needs to use Zakayev's name to whip up anti-Russian hysteria."
