The Hindu : Russia arrests two Qatar nationals `in retaliation'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Mar 01, 2004

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International

Russia arrests two Qatar nationals `in retaliation'

By Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW, FEB. 29. Two nationals of Qatar were held in Moscow in an apparent quid pro quo for the detention of two Russian spies in Doha.

The embassy of Qatar in Russia today confirmed reports that two Qatar sportsmen had been detained at a Moscow airport on Friday.

The incident came 10 days after three Russian secret service officers had been apprehended by Qatar authorities as suspects in the recent assassination of the exiled Chechen rebel leader, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev. One of the arrested, who had a diplomatic passport, was later released, while the other two were reportedly charged with murder.

The Russian Foreign Minister, Igor Ivanov, strongly protested the arrest of the Russians, describing it as a `provocation'. He denied any role of Moscow in the killing of Yandarbiyev, but admitted that the arrested Russians were secret service officers gathering information on Chechen terrorists in Qatar.

Russian authorities declined to comment on the detention of the two Qatari nationals, but the RIA Novosti news agency quoted a source in the Qatar embassy today as saying they were members of Qatar's Olympic wrestling team travelling from Belarus to Serbia.

They were detained allegedly because their travel papers were not in order and they had failed to declare a large sum of money, the source said.

Yandarbiyev was killed when his car was blow up in Doha on Feb. 13.

Russia said he was a key fund-raiser for Chechen rebels and had played a key role in several rebel attacks, including the 2002 seizure of a Moscow theatre in which 129 hostages died.

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