Sultan Geliskhanov

Sultan Geliskhanov (Султан Гелисханов) is a former head of the state security service in the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and a former field commander in the Chechen resistance against Russia.

Sultan Geliskhanov was born in 1955 in internal exile in Kazakhstan. According to the other sources he belongs to the Yalxoroj (Ялхорой) teip (clan) and is originally from the village of Yalxoroj which is named after this teip.

During the Soviet period Geliskhanov served as chief of the traffic police in Gudermes, Chechnya's second-largest city, reaching the rank of colonel.

Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Chechnya's declaration of independence, after Geliskhanov lost in elections to the post of mayor of Gudermes 1992, in 1993 Dzhokhar Dudayev made him Chechen minister of internal affairs and then director of the State Security Department DGB (ДГБ) later the same year. His rise was made possible by his friendship with Dudayev's son-in-law, Salman Raduyev.

In June 1993, Geliskhanov ordered disarmament of all "illegal armed formations" and banned civilians from bearing arms in public (a right given to the people by Dudayev earlier). He then personally led the breaking up of an opposition rally in central Grozny, during which some 15 people were killed; a year later, he directed large-scale arrests of opposition members. Geliskhanov's DGB successes included the arrest the Chechen mafia boss Nikolay Suleimanov and the capture of two high-ranking officers of the Russian Federal Counterintelligence Service (FSK, at the time the main successor agency to the KGB) clandestinely deployed to Chechnya.Ruslan Labazanov, opposition co-leader, crime kingpin and renegade former head of Dudayev's bodyguards, publicily swore to kill "especially Dudayev and Geliskhanov."

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