Ruslan Labazanov

Ruslan Labazanov (1967–1996) was a notorious criminal boss of the Chechen mafia and head of a Chechen armed faction, held by some as an example of a modern abrek (bandit hero).

Labazanov was born in internal exile in Kazakhstan in 1967 in the Chechen family of a teyp Nohch-Keloy (clan). He became an Eastern martial arts expert and served in the Soviet Red Army as a physical training instructor. After leaving the army, he became known as a flamboyant, charismatic and extremely violent gangster. In 1990 he was convicted of murder in Rostov-on-Don and sentenced to death, before escaping from prison in 1991. According to himself, he actually escaped from Grozny pretrial detention center: "During the 1991 coup, I freed the whole prison, nearly 600 men, ahead of time. They obeyed me."

Since 1992 Labazanov aligned closely with the Chechen President Dzhokhar Dudayev, eventually becoming the chief of Dudayev's personal Presidential Guard and holding a rank of captain in the Chechen National Guard (in 1992–1993 he had been also been engaged in illegal arms trade) before failing out with him after a year-and-half during the 1993 Chechen constitutional crisis. After a bloody two-day clash between his followers and allies, including Chechen mafia boss Nikolay Suleimanov, and Dudayev's loyalists in the centre of the Chechen capital Grozny on June 13–14, Labazanov fled the city and promptly declared a blood feud against Dudayev for the death of his relative (either a brother or a cousin), whose head was publicly displayed among the heads of three other Labazanov's henchmen.

Labazanov then joined Umar Avturkhanov and the other criminal leader and one-time Dudayev supporter Beslan Gantamirov (the ex-mayor of Grozny) in the anti-Dudayev opposition, called the Chechen Provisional Council, operating as commander of his own paramilitary outfit - the "Justice" (Niiso) movement, partially controlling the Shalinsky and Vedensky districts of southern Chechnya. Labazanov assumed a role of a "Chechen Robin Hood", a self-styled defender of the people against the oppressive authorities. His private army of about two hundred men, mostly former convicts like himself, was based in and around the town of Argun and supplied with T-72 tanks and other heavy weapons provided by the Russian special services. They also provided personal security and other armed men for Ruslan Khasbulatov (freshly released from Russian prison following his defeat in the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis) and his abortive "peacemaking" initiative.

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