Chechen separatist emissary: Saakashvili men trained Chechen militants to be sent to Russia

(Interfax – TBILISI, April 4, 2013) Akhmed Zakayev, formerly known as a Chechen separatist emissary, has accused Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s entourage of arming and training a group of Chechen saboteurs and planning to send them to Russia in 2012.

“People from Saakashvili’s inner circle brought a group of Chechens from Europe, organized their training, provided them with weapons and were supposed to arrange a safe corridor for them to enter Dagestani territory,” Zakayev said on Georgian radio on Thursday.

Zakayev said he is aware that Georgian Human Rights Ombudsman Ucha Nanuashvili had publicized an annual report several days before, in which he accused the former authorities of training a group of Chechens for sending them to Dagestan.

Nanuashvili mentioned a Georgian Interior Ministry and Defense Ministry operation in the Lopota Gorge near the Georgian-Russian border in August 2012, in which 11 militants and 3 Georgian troops were killed.

The ombudsman claimed that the militants had undergone training with Georgian instructors in the Pankisi Gorge.

The then leadership of the Georgian Interior Ministry said at the time that the Chechen saboteurs had entered Georgian territory from Dagestan and were killed when trying to put up armed resistance.

The Georgian prosecution authorities are investigating the incident in the Lopota Gorge, although no details of the investigation have been disclosed so far.