DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A hand-drawn map showing the murder site of a former Chechen warlord was found in a Dubai apartment linked to two suspects in the slaying earlier this year, a police investigator testified Monday.
The testimony provided the first public details of the police probe after the March killing of Sulim Yamadayev, who was a bitter foe of Chechnya’s Moscow-backed president.
The investigator, Ahmad al-Marri, said police discovered a trail of cast-off items around the beachside complex where Yamadaeyev was gunned down, including a pair of black gloves and a bag containing pieces of the pistol believed used in the slaying.
Later, authorities received information about two Russian brothers possibly linked to the shooting, al-Marri testified. In an apartment rented by the brothers, he said investigators found a hand-sketched map of the murder site.
The brothers fled Dubai and there is an international arrest warrant for them. But two other men — from Iran and Tajikistan — were arrested in the Emirates on charges of helping plot the ambush-style slaying and helping the suspected killers.
The two have pleaded not guilty. The trial was adjourned until Nov. 16.
Yamadayev was a former Chechen warlord who switched sides in the conflicts between Chechen rebels and the Russian government, but later also fell out of favor with the region’s Kremlin-allied president Ramzan Kadyrov.
Yamadayev had been living under an alias in a luxury high-rise complex along the Gulf coast.
His slaying was the first reported politically motivated killing in Dubai, which regularly hosts out-of-favor political figures from around the world with the tacit understanding they would remain out of the public eye.
Other suspects wanted by Dubai authorities in the slaying include Adam Delimkhanov, a Russian parliament deputy and close ally of the Chechen president. Delimkhanov has denied Dubai’s allegations that he masterminded the killing.
