Berg-Hadj Musayev, Zaurbek Amriyev and Rustam Altemirov were shot dead on Sept. 16 in a parking lot in Istanbul, in a killing that was blamed on Russian special services by a Turkish-based support group for refugees from the Caucasus.
Russia’s Federal Investigative Committee said it was probing the murders of Amriyev and Altemirov as part of an investigation into the suicide bombing at Domodedovo airport.
The third Chechen, Musayev, has been closely linked to Russia’s most-wanted militant leader, Chechen-born Doku Umarov, according to kavkazcenter.com, a website affiliated with the Islamist insurgency in the North Caucasus.
Umarov has said on video that he organized the airport suicide bombing, which was carried out by a 20-year-old man from the Ingushetia region neighboring Chechnya.
“The murder in September 2011 in Istanbul of Zaurbek Amriyev and Rustam Altemirov, who were on an international wanted list, is being probed,” investigators said in a statement on the Domodedovo bombing.
The three Chechens were shot dead by 11 bullets fired from a pistol fitted with a silencer, Turkish media reported.
Russia is grappling with an Islamist insurgency led by Umarov in its mainly Muslim North Caucasus, where rebels seeking to carve out a separate Islamic state stage near-daily shootings and bomb attacks.
The United States has offered a $5 million reward for information leading to the arrest of Umarov.
Umarov has also claimed responsibility for twin attacks on the Moscow metro last year that killed at least another 40 people, as well as the derailing of a train in 2009 that killed at least 26.
While Vladimir Putin was president, 2006 amendments to Russian legislation gave the president the right to order special forces to hunt down suspected “terrorists” abroad.
Putin, now prime minister but seeking a return to the presidency in March, asked for such rights after four Russian diplomats were killed in Iraq.
Russian intelligence has been accused of a series of killings abroad in recent years, including the 2004 murder of former Chechen rebel Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev in Qatar and the poisoning of Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko in London.
Russia’s SVR Foreign Intelligence Service declined to comment on the killings in Turkey. Russia’s powerful military intelligence, known as GRU, is so secretive it does not have a spokesman.
