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Said-Magomed Shamaevich Kakiev (Russian: Саид-Магомед Шамаевич Какиев; born 22 February 1970) is the leader of the Special Battalion West, a Chechen military force loyal to the pro-Moscow government in Grozny, Chechnya.

Kakiev has been declared a Hero of the Russian Federation four times, has twice received the Medal for Courage and was awarded two specially engraved guns from the Russian Ministry of Defense.

Contents 1 Early Years 2 Later years 3 Present 4 Accusations 5 External links

Said-Magomed finished Grozny vocational school in 1989 and went to serve in the army. He was assigned to Nagorny Karabakh where he witnessed at first hand the devastating aftermath of the Soviet Union collapse. In the war, he acquired the rank of major.

He came home to a Chechnya in turmoil. Dzhokhar Dudaev had started a rebellion against Soviet, later Russian rule, but the Northern part of Chechnya where Kakiev hailed from was not so enthusiastic about the secession. After witnessing atrocities, Kakiev joined the opposion against Dudaev. In 1993 he was seriously hurt when a hand grenade meant for Dudaev exploded in his own hands. He lost a hand, an eye and his nose and had to have his face reconstructed beyond recognition, at a hospital in Moscow's Arbat Street. After the operation, Said-Magomed briefly studied at Alma Ata University and returned to Russia to take a tax police training course.

In 1994-1995, Said-Magomed returned to Chechnya to fight on the federal side in the First Chechen War. The most formative event in his life was the Dagestanskaya Street massacre on August 6, 1996, when 30 opposition fighters and militia officers defending the city mayor's office were shot and killed despite promises of free passage through the city. Kakiev, who was the commander of the OMON unit, managed to escape. Kakiev has consistently blamed Doku Umarov and Ruslan Gelaev for the Dagestanskaya massacre.

At the end of 1996, Aslan Maskhadov declared him an outlaw and put a price on his head: whoever killed him would receive the title of Hero of Ichkeria. Kakiev had to take his relatives into hiding and live in Moscow for almost three years.

When in September 1999, the Russian army invaded Chechnya after the Chechen incursion in Dagestan and the Moscow apartment block bombings, Said was able to return to Northern Chechnya. With some of his fellow anti-Maskhadov rebels, he formed an armed detachment and entered Grozny. Kakiev claimed his unit was the first to hoist the Russian flag in Grozny. During the battle of Komsomolskoye, forces commanded by Kakiev managed to surround forces commanded by Ruslan Gelayev; Kakiev was also involved in hunting down Gelayev during the winter of 2003-2004.

Kakiev, who became a devout Sufi Muslim after his two escapes from death, is believed to be one of the more effective and disciplined of Grozny's commanders, and resents any suggestion of subordination to Ramzan Kadyrov or Sulim Yamadayev, themselves both powerful commanders loyal to Grozny. In recent interviews, he went so far as to put the Kremlin policy of amnesty for all defecting rebels into question.

Though he has increased his power base with support from people who are tired of both the war and corruption, his unit "Zapad", unlike other pro-Moscow factions, still does not include defectors. Some sources link Kakiev politically to Chechen millionaire Hussein Dzhabrailov, who has made little secret of his interest in the Chechen presidency.

According to the Anna Politkovskaya's last article published in her lifetime, in the early 1990s Kakiyev was a member of a gang led by a recidivist criminal Ruslan Labazanov, who during the first war (Politkovskaya erroneously claimed between the two wars), made a mark for himself by abducting people in order to hold them for ransom. [1]

• Said-Magomed recalls
• Sobaka dossier
• Kakiev interview with Utro (Warning: this English translation takes some liberties with the Russian original)
• Land of the warlords - Who's who in the new Chechnya\