WASHINGTON
Aliaskhab Kebekov, a key Al-Qaeda affiliate group leader in Russia's North Caucasus, has been added to the U.S. counter terrorism sanctions list, the State Department said Wednesday.
Kebekov claimed the leadership of the Caucasus Emirate, also known as Imarat Kavkaz, last March, following the death of Doku Umarov.
He is also known as Ali Abu Muhammed and has been on Russia's most-wanted list since April 2012, accused of participating in an illicit armed formation. He is also listed by the UN’s al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee.
In the summer of 2014, Kebekov issued a video statement proclaiming the Caucasus Emirate’s “structural subordination” to al-Qaeda and noted his group’s readiness to execute orders and instructions from al-Qaeda’s leaders.
As the leader of Caucasus Emirate group, Kekebov took responsibility for killing 14 police officers in an attack on a road patrol station in the Chechen capital of Grozny last December. At least 36 others were injured in the attack.
In 2013, Caucasus regional police reported that Kebekov ordered the killing of Sheikh Said-Afandi Chirkeyskiy, a moderate religious leader in the Republic of Dagestan, also in the North Caucasus region, who was ideologically opposed to the Caucasus Emirate.
Early this year, at least six Chechen and Dagestani leaders retracted their allegiances to the Caucasus Emirate and swore fealty to Daesh.
Kekebov criticized the departing members for falling for “the tricks of Satan.”
He had earlier pledged his support for al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in the wake of al-Zawahiri’s dispute with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Daesh’s leader.
