From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 4/1/2007 4:19 AM
The Sunday Times
April 1, 2007
Putin hands Chechnya to his ‘little Saddam’
Mark Franchetti, Moscow

As the owner of a pet tiger, and a man who likes to show off his rocket propelled grenade firing skills in public, Ramzan Kadyrov, 30, could hardly be expected to celebrate modestly when he is inaugurated as president of Chechnya this week.
 
It promises to be the most ostentatious event seen in the war-ravaged republic. Patricia Kaas, the French pop diva, has been invited to sing at the ceremony before more than 1,500 guests. The bill for the banquet alone, which will include caviar and champagne for non-Muslim guests, will run to nearly £400,000, an astronomical sum in a place impoverished by a decade of fighting and where the average salary is £100 a month.
The guest list is said to include Caroline Verkaik, the Kenyan entrant in the Mrs World competition, a beauty pageant for married women that was held recently in southern Russia. She is unlikely to attend, however.
 
Kadyrov, a Muslim and father of five who has expressed support for polygamy, proposed to Verkaik before the contest by presenting her with two chickens, two horses and a goat, the traditional Chechen dowry. She turned him down.
 
Such is the fear of an assassination attempt against Kadyrov — who is known among his many critics as Russia’s “little Saddam” — that rehearsals for the event are being held in several locations to keep the venue secret.
 
It is nearly three years since his father, President Akhmad Kadyrov, was killed by a huge terrorist bomb at a football stadium.
 
The succession of “King Ramzan” has had to wait until he reached the legal minimum age required by the constitution. But he is already well established as the most powerful — and most feared — man in Chechnya.
 
A former amateur boxer renowned for his love of violence, he owes his coronation to Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, who is banking on him to bring stability. Putin has already awarded Kadyrov the Hero of Russia medal, the country’s highest accolade.
 
For human rights campaigners, Kadyrov’s inauguration will be a dark day. Until recently he headed a militia of more than 8,000 men known as the ”Kadyrovtsy”.
 
According to countless eyewitness reports, his men — who have taken control of Chechnya’s security from the Russian army — have abducted, tortured and summarily executed people they suspected of links with Islamic rebels opposed to Moscow.
 
Some of the victims of human rights abuses have accused Kadyrov, a heavily built man who drives an armoured Hummer and has an explosive temper, of personally torturing people, in some cases by burning them with a blow torch.
 
“The Kremlin, which has bombed Chechnya for years and killed 100,000 people, is now handing it over to a dictator-in-the-making,” said a Grozny-based campaigner. “He behaves like someone who owns the republic and everyone in it.”
 
Kadyrov vehemently denies the allegations against him and recently claimed that Chechnya had become the most peaceful part of Russia.
He has also rejected any suggestion that he was linked to the contract killing of Anna Politkovskaya, the investigative reporter who had called for him to be tried for war crimes.
 
In an effort to improve his image, he organised a human rights conference in Grozny, which most campaigners boycotted. Kadyrov has accused a pro-Russian Chechen unit that is not formally under his command of committing most of the recent crimes in the country. But one human rights group has obtained a film taken on a mobile phone in which a man it believes to be Kadyrov is seen beating a detainee with a heavy stick during questioning.
 
The video will not be released until the victim’s identity and fate have been established.
 
In another recent incident, four former rebels who had returned to civilian life were abducted at gunpoint and brought to Tsenteroi, Kadyrov’s heavily fortified home village. The men were given electric shocks and scorched with a gas flame before being released covered in wounds.
 
Kadyrov has won genuine respect among ordinary Chechens, however, with a huge reconstruction programme.
 
Much of the work is superficial and in many cases it has been funded with money extorted from state workers; but it is the first positive sign that the republic is being rebuilt.
 
The new buildings are surrounded with billboards carrying giant portraits of Kadyrov, although he denies that he is creating a Stalin-like personality cult.
 
“As for the personality cult, I found out about it only recently,” he said last month. “It’s just a way for people to express their gratitude for what I have done for them.”
 
A Russian general who fought in Chechnya said he was apprehensive. “Putin has taken a big gamble by backing Kadyrov so openly,” he said. “He is becoming more powerful by the day. It could go to his head.
 
“The Kremlin has created something that could yet come back to haunt it.”
 
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article1596830.ece