But human rights activists say that most of the people who have disappeared since the young president came to power were taken by his security forces. The police forces are dominated by Kadyrov's former rebel fighters; so are the members of his personal security detail.
"We are looking for them. We are digging them up," Kadyrov says. "The majority of people who are missing committed crimes in Chechnya and left our state. Some took to the forest. Some of them died."
The rate of disappearances drastically slowed as Kadyrov grew stronger and silenced dissent, according to human rights monitors. But they warn that the statistics have gotten harder to measure as people have become more fearful.
"There's a very, very big number of people who disappear for several hours or several days and return home beaten up and psychologically broken, and most of them never say what happened to them," says Natalia Estemirova, a monitor in Grozny for Memorial. "This is being seriously hushed up."
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Kadyrov is married and the father of five children. His tastes run to dangerous animals, fast cars and boxing.
He doesn't bother with a driver, just swings himself behind the wheel of his Mercedes and careens over the roads in snaking convoys of security officers, trailed by an identical Mercedes with an identical license plate and a look-alike driver. When he gets to where he's going, his staff rushes to change the plates, all to thwart any would-be assassin.
On the mountainside overlooking the presidential residence in Gudermes, this city east of Grozny, "There's no god but God" is spelled out in massive Arabic letters.
Out past the hulking stone house and fragrant rose garden, Kadyrov leads visitors from cage to cage in his private zoo, showing off the lions, leopards and pumas. He reaches inside to pet and tousle them, to pull them closer and slam them against the bars. He tugs hard on the lion's mane.
When the beasts growl at him, he growls right back, baring his teeth and mirroring their mugs. "This one is not friendly yet," he says, looking intently at a snarling panther. "But every person has his frequency. We'll find the frequency to deal with him."
He leads his visitors down to the pond; when they pick their way across a bridge rigged from rope and planks, he stands at one end shaking the structure. Watching them waver and lose their balance, he laughs his grunting laugh again. And then, lest anybody be confused, he crows: "I'm doing it on purpose!"
