The man who proudly proclaimed his responsibility for an atrocity that saw hundreds of Russian children murdered assumed room temperature earlier today. Chechen "warlord" (terrorist) Shamil Besayev died in a battle between his forces and the Russians in nearby Ingushetia:

FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev said on Monday that Basayev, who claimed responsibility for the 2004 Beslan school attack in which 331 people, half of them children, were killed, was planning an attack to coincide with Russia hosting the G8 summit of world leaders this weekend.

CNN's Matthew Chance said the killing was a massive victory for the security services and a huge blow for the rebel leadership.

Basayev, together with other Chechen fighters, was killed in Ingushetia, a region neighboring Chechnya, where rebels are battling for independence.

The CNN report includes a pretty good review of Basayev's career as a terrorist. He also claimed responsibility for a seizure of a Moscow theater with hundreds of hostages that wound up being caught on videotape and rebroadcast later as a gripping documentary. In that attack, a number of Chechen terrorists strapped explosives onto themselves, including some women. The Russians pumped a powerful anaesthetic into the auditorium, incapacitating everyone, but did not apply the antidote quickly enough. Over a hundred hostages, along with all of the terrorists, perished.

His death in Ingushetia belies his supposedly nationalist outlook. Basayev would never have been satisfied with a strictly Chechen resolution in the Caucasus. He wanted an Islamist takeover of the entire region. Basayev no more represented nationalism than David Koresh represented an effort for religious freedom. Basayev wanted to set the entire region on fire, which this map shows would have directly threatened Georgia and Azerbaijan, the latter of which already has enough of these troubles as it is. He had the capacity for a lot more death and destruction had he continued to live.

Now he has perished at the hands of the Russians, and the familes of those murdered children of Beslan can rest a little easier now. He managed to escape the justice he richly deserved, and died on the battlefield, a fate that gives his low character more cachet than it should. At least he's dead.

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