Remember those Chechen “rebels” who carried out the bomb attack in a Moscow subway last week? I told you at the time that they were radical Muslim jihadists. Now it turns out that they are even led by a Saudi, Abu-al-Walid al-Ghamidi. He draws the same distinction between wanton murder of Muslims (not ok) and wanton murder of non-Muslims (ok) that radical Muslims have made elsewhere — notably in Iraq and Saudi Arabia. From the Times Online, with thanks to LGF:
A Saudi Islamic militant based in the breakaway republic of Chechnya is suspected of being behind last Friday”s bomb attack on the Moscow metro, which killed 39 people and wounded more than 130.
Abu-al-Walid al-Ghamidi, 36, has been identified by the FSB, the Russian intelligence service, as one of the most powerful figures in the Chechen rebel leadership. As the commander of several hundred Arabs fighting alongside the rebels, he is thought to have been responsible for a wave of suicide bomb attacks that have killed more than 200 people in just over a year.
He is also believed to have been one of the masterminds of the Moscow theatre siege of October 2002, which ended with the deaths of 40 Chechen terrorists and 129 of their hostages.
Walid, a follower of the Wahhabi sect that dominates worship in Saudi Arabia, signalled the determination of Chechen extremists to take their war against the Kremlin to Russian soil when he broadcast a statement from the republic last year on Al-Jazeera, the Arab television network.
“If operations in Chechnya continue they will harm Chechen people, so we have decided to export operations inside Russia,” declared Walid, a bearded man with long black hair who wore a uniform and spoke against the backdrop of a Chechen flag.
“We consider all Russian people warriors because they elected this leadership when it pledged to crush the Chechen people. God willing they will pay for their fight with their blood and their sons.”