Rappani Khalilov
| Rappani Khalilov | |
|---|---|
Khalilov (centre) together with Sheikh Abdul-Halim and Abu Hafs al-Urduni.
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| Nickname(s) | Rabbani |
| Born | 27 October 1969 Buynaksk, Dagestan |
| Died |
17 September 2007 (aged 37) Novy Sulak, Dagestan |
| Allegiance | Shariat Jamaat |
| Battles/wars |
Invasion of Dagestan Second Chechen War |
Rappani Khalilov (Russian: Раппани Халилов) (October 27, 1969 – September 17, 2007), also known as Rabbani, was the militant leader of the Shariat Jamaat of the Caucasian Front during the Second Chechen War, in the volatile southern Russian republic of Dagestan. He was killed on September 17, 2007 in a fierce shoot-out with the Russian special forces.
Khalilov was an ethnic Lak, the sixth largest ethnic group in Dagestan. In 1944 his ancestors were forcibly resettled from the mountains to the territory of a gorge in Aukhovsky (Novalaksky) District in the then-Chechen-Ingush ASSR, which was vacated following the deportation of the Chechens to Siberia and subsequently became part of the Dagestan ASSR. Khalilov himself, however, was born and grew up in the city of Buynaksk in Dagestan. Khalilov's first name, Rabbani, means "pertaining to God" in Arabic and is rendered Rappani in local dialect.
Khalilov was unknown to Dagestani security forces prior to 1998. In the Soviet times he had served as a border guard along the border with Mongolia; after that, he wae was a co-owner of a family bakery. Khalilov came to the attention of the authorities in 1998 when he married the sister of the foreign mujahideen commander Ibn al-Khattab's ethnic Dargin wife; he moved to her home village of Karamakhi, which acquired notoriety in the summer of the same year, when its residents introduced Sharia law and declared an Islamic state. Khalilov grew close to local Islamist ideologists and is thought to have met Khattab and Shamil Basayev at a militant training camp in Serzhen-Yurt, south-eastern Chechnya. In 1999 he was involved in the Dagestan War in which Khattab and Basayev sought to create an Islamic superstate out of Chechnya and Dagestan. After that raid was suppressed, he created his own unit of mostly Dagestani rebels.
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