MOSCOW — It is a time-tested way to dispose of enemies. Now a prominent Chechen Web site and some newspapers here are suggesting that a fast-acting poison hidden in a letter was the instrument used in March to kill one of Russia's chief enemies: an Arab guerrilla named Khattab.
If so, it would resurrect a method of assassination often used in czarist times and by the former Soviet Union.
The Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB, announced Thursday that Khattab--one of the country's most wanted foes and a prominent rebel in the separatist republic of Chechnya--had been killed in late March in the Chechen mountains through an unspecified "special operation."
The next night, FSB officials released a videotape of what appeared to be the corpse of Khattab, a bushy-bearded warrior accused by the Russians of being the Chechens' conduit to the terror organization of Osama bin Laden. He was shown laid out on the ground, surrounded by comrades, dressed in T-shirt and camouflage pants, with no evident wounds on his body.
A Web site used to distribute news from Chechen guerrillas, who are seeking independence from Russia, acknowledged Monday that Khattab--generally known by that one name--had indeed been assassinated.
"According to information from the headquarters of the Chechen moujahedeen, Amir Khattab was poisoned on March 19 by a letter that was brought to him by a messenger," said the Kavkaz Center site, www.kavkaz.org.
"It has been established precisely that Khattab was poisoned by that letter," the statement continued. "Khattab knew the messenger who brought the letter," and the assailant is now believed to be with the Russians, it added.
Russian newspapers were quick to take up the theme Tuesday that Khattab had been poisoned, suggesting that the FSB had played a role in stoking rivalries within the rebel camp until Khattab was betrayed by one of his own comrades.
Another report said that Khattab, who was believed to have been born in Jordan or Saudi Arabia, was done in by Jordanian intelligence agents and Chechens, with hardly any connivance on the Russian side.
"In the opinion of extremists, Khattab died having opened a poisoned letter delivered to him by someone from his closest entourage," the newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta reported Tuesday. "Khattab was betrayed by his own people, which ... does not rule out a secret operation carefully planned by the FSB, cleverly making use of the incredible discord among bandit formations."
