{"id":11991,"date":"2012-08-22T06:02:32","date_gmt":"2012-08-22T13:02:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=11991"},"modified":"2012-08-22T06:02:32","modified_gmt":"2012-08-22T13:02:32","slug":"syria-the-international-war-mercenaries-from-chechnya-on-us-saudi-payroll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=11991","title":{"rendered":"Syria &#8211; The International War &#8211; Mercenaries from Chechnya on US-Saudi Payroll"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Former Chechen warlord&#8217;s son killed in Syria: report<\/strong><br \/>\n22 August, 2012 &#8211; Agence France Presse<\/p>\n<p>MOSCOW: The son of a late Chechen field commander who waged two post-Soviet wars against Russian forces has been killed while fighting with the rebels in Syria, a Russian Islamist website said Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>Rustam Gelayev, son of former warlord Ruslan Gelayev, &#8220;entered into a battle with superior forces of the Alawite regime in a Syrian district, presumably between August 11 and August 13,&#8221; the KavkazCenter website said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;During the fighting, he was martyred,&#8221; said the website, which is regularly used by Russian-based Islamic militants to exchange information and has developed a history of providing accurate battlefield reports.<\/p>\n<p>The elder Gelayev was one of the top commanders in Chechnya&#8217;s first war for independence that killed tens of thousands between 1994 and 1996 and ended with the region winning broader sovereignty within Russia.<\/p>\n<p>The improvised region was then wrecked by infighting between the various field commanders and remained infested by violent organised crime until its more militant leaders challenged Russia again in 1999.<\/p>\n<p>The elder Gelayev joined the second war as well, which continued to simmer for years after Russian troops claimed control over Chechnya&#8217;s main cities in 2000.<\/p>\n<p>He was killed in 2004 while leading a group of gunmen in battle against Russian border guards in the neighbouring North Caucasus region of Dagestan.<\/p>\n<p>KavkazCenter said the younger Gelayev was born in 1988 and had lived for a most of his life in Russia before receiving an Islamic education in an unnamed Middle East country.<\/p>\n<p>He came to Syria in the summer, said the website, citing unnamed sources and members of the Chechen diaspora in Europe.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailystar.com.lb\/News\/Middle-East\/2012\/Aug-22\/185342-former-chechen-warlords-son-killed-in-syria-report.ashx\" target=\"_blank\">&#8230;more<\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"igit_tsb_button\" style=\"float: left; margin-right: 10px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/share?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.crookedbough.com%2F%3Fp%3D11991&amp;text=Syria+-+The+International+War+-+Mercenaries+from+Chechnya+on+US-Saudi+Payroll&amp;count=horizontal&amp;via=\" style=\"\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former Chechen warlord&#8217;s son killed in Syria: report 22 August, 2012 &#8211; Agence France Presse MOSCOW: The son of a late Chechen field commander who waged two post-Soviet wars against Russian forces has been killed while fighting with the rebels in Syria, a Russian Islamist website said Wednesday. Rustam Gelayev, son of former warlord Ruslan <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=11991#more-'\" class=\"more-link\">more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[2000],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11991"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11991"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11993,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11991\/revisions\/11993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}