Rebel leader from a family of notorious Chechen killers

Movsar Barayev may receive the glory he seems to crave by becoming the latest in a notorious family to die as a martyr for the Chechen cause.

In a broadcast on Russian television yesterday the leader of the rebel gang holding hostages inside a Moscow theatre said his Islamist brigade was "waiting to start an assault". Seated next to a group of rebels in masks, Barayev, unshaven and in army fatigues and dark woollen hat, spoke calmly to his interviewer. The name of his group, he said, meant "vowed to death in Islam".

Other members of his family, based in Argun, south-east of the Chechen capital of Grozny, have already taken that path in their response to the Russian war against their breakaway Muslim republic and its people.

The most ruthless was his uncle, Arbi Barayev, who was killed by Russian forces in a six-day shoot-out in June last year. Arbi Barayev, whose speciality was kidnappings for ransom, decapitated Russian hostages when a ransom was not paid.

He spread his net to cover Westerners, culminating in the 1998 capture of four telecommunications workers – three Britons and a New Zealander – for whom a £10m ransom was sought. But he was promised three times as much, reportedly from Osama bin Laden, if they were executed. Their decapitated heads were found on a roadside.

Arbi Barayev sent a cousin, Khala Barayeva, to blow herself up at a Russian checkpoint in June 2000. Her dying words were: "I am going to die in the name of Allah and the freedom of the Chechen people."

Movsar's role in these events is not known. At the time, he was a commander with a group called the Islam Special Units. Now aged 25 or 26, he took over the "family business" after his uncle's death. He won the patronage of another powerful warlord, the Jordanian-born Khattab, who was himself killed by the Russians earlier this year.

But Khattab's generous funding of Movsar brought resentment from other warlords, according to Oxana Antonenko, a Chechnya specialist at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Several of his close associates were assassinated. He also proved unpopular among the locals in Argun, because of his "hit and run" style and criminal activities.

"After Khattab was killed, Barayev went underground because he was worried he would be targeted by other warlords," she said. Consequently, it is not known whether the theatre siege is a freelance operation by Barayev or whether he is acting with broader support. "His funding has dried up, maybe he's done this to raise his profile in the Chechen community," Ms Antonenko said.

The Chechen President, Aslan Maskhadov, has distanced himself from the hostage-taking even though he has allied himself more closely with the Islamist wing after talks with Moscow faltered.

Chechen radicals claim to belong to the conservative Wahhabite sect, which has provided a profitable link to paymasters in Saudi Arabia, where Wahhabism is strong. But although they want an Islamic caliphate in Chechnya, few follow the strict Wahhabi code.

The appearance on al-Jazeera television of a group Chechen "smertniki" martyrs on Thursday could be a new fund-raising tactic. They seem to be appealing to a wider Arab audience in the same way as Hamas suicide-bombers.

The staged broadcast showed a man and woman clad in black. "I swear by God we are more keen on dying than you are keen on living," said the man. "Each of us is willing to sacrifice himself for God and the independence of Chechnya."

Movsar Barayev's links to foreign groups are not known, although his uncle was reportedly able to take advantage of logistical networks in Lebanon and Azerbaijan.

Vladimir Putin, Russia's President and once head of Russia's domestic intelligence agency, has no doubt that the rebel operation was "a terrorist act planned abroad".