DUBAI, March 30 A Russian war hero who became a leading opponent of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov has been shot dead in Dubai, the victim of an apparent assassination.Police in the emirate said a Chechen man, identified as 36-year-old Sulaiman Madov, was shot dead on Saturday, reportedly in the underground carpark of his luxury hotel residence.

“The murder of the Chechen seems to be an assassination because he was shot dead in the parking (lot) of the building where he was living,” Lt-Gen Dahi Khalfan Tamim, head of Dubai police, said in a statement.

Russian media said Madov was the name used by Sulim Yamadayev, a well-known opponent of Kadyrov.

Yamadayev`s brother Ruslan, a former MP for the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, was shot dead in September in the centre of Moscow. Sulim Yamadayev accused Kadyrov of being behind the killing and vowed to avenge the murder.

He was dismissed from the military amid the bitter rivalry with Kadyrov, while Russian police issued an arrest warrant against him over the alleged kidnapping of a Chechen businessman in 1998.

Unable to secure protection from the Kremlin, Yamadayev fled Russia fearing for his life.

Formerly the commander of Vostok, an elite battalion established to fight separatists in Chechnya, Yamadayev had been honoured with Russia`s top military gong, the Hero of Russia award.

Kadyrov`s spokesman Alvi Karimov expressed hope that the Dubai authorities would be able to bring his killers to justice.

“It is to be hoped that the Russian security authorities cooperate in the investigation if necessary,” he told the Interfax news agency.

It is not the first time a prominent Chechen figure has been shot dead abroad, or even in an Arabian peninsula state.

Anti-Moscow leader Zelimkhan Yanderbiyev, who was wanted at the time by Russia, was murdered in Qatar in Feb 2004. Two Russian secret service agents were found guilty of the killing in Qatar.

Umar Israilov, a former member of Kadyrov`s security forces who defected and sought asylum in Austria in 2006, was gunned down in the street near his Vienna home in February this year.

Russia fought two full-scale wars with separatist forces after the collapse of the Soviet Union in Chechnya, but the situation has stabilised in the last years under the pro-Moscow Kadyrov.

Due to the improved security situation, President Dmitry Medvedev last week ordered the Russian authorities to move towards ending the anti-terror operation in Chechnya that has been in place for the last decade.

Russia`s consul in Dubai, Sergei Krasnogor, refused to confirm unequivocally that the victim of Saturday`s shooting was Yamadayev.

“We still cannot say with 100 per cent certainty that it was Yamadayev who died,” he told RIA Novosti. “The murdered man lived in Dubai under the name of Sulaiman Madov and official identification of the body has not taken place.”

The Russian news agency, however, quoted a relation confirming that it was Yamadayev and saying that he had died of his wounds at a Dubai hospital.

The Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper said Yamadayev had been living in Dubai for the past five months and held a passport in the name of Sulaiman Madov.

“I suspect who has done it but I don`t want to say so far. Everybody knows anyway for whom Sulim is like a bone in the throat,” the paper quoted his brother as saying.

The Kommersant newspaper quoted a Chechen source in Dubai as saying Yamadayev was shot in the early hours of the morning outside the luxury Jumeirah Beach Residence hotel complex. —AFP