Chechen field commander Said Buryatsky (Alexander Tikhomirov). From Said Buryat to Jihadi Tolik, Sashka had no friends

Abu Saad Said al-Buryati(Arab. أبو سعد سعيد البورياتي ‎) (known as Said Buryatsky; birth name Alexander Aleksandrovich Tikhomirov; February 10, Ulan-Ude, Buryat Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic - March 2, Ekazhevo, Ingushetia, Russia) - member of terrorist groups, Salafi preacher and one of the ideologists of the North Caucasian armed underground. On March 4, 2010, sources in Russian security forces disseminated information that Said Buryatsky was killed in Ingushetia. The identity of the murdered man was confirmed by the results of a forensic medical examination carried out in Rostov-on-Don. On March 6, 2010, the President of Ingushetia Yunus-Bek Yevkurov confirmed the death of Said Buryatsky.

Biography

Alexander Aleksandrovich Tikhomirov was born on February 10, 1982 in the city of Ulan-Ude, Buryat Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.

He worked in the Dar ul-Akram organization and collaborated with the religious publishing house Umma.

Since 2002, he began recording lectures on religious topics, which quickly spread among Islamic youth. Among his most famous lectures are the cycles "Righteous Predecessors", "Journey to Eternal Life", "Talbis Iblis"(from Arabic “Satan’s veil”), “100 stories of unjust deaths” and others. He also translated religious documentaries from Arabic into Russian (“Crimes of the Shiites over the centuries”, “Description of the Prophet’s prayer”).

Caucasus Emirate

At the beginning of 2008, Said Buryatsky received a video letter from the famous Arab field commander Muhannad and decided to join the North Caucasian armed underground. A few months later, he secretly arrived in Chechnya, where he met with the leader of the underground, the so-called. “Emir” of the terrorist organization “Caucasian Emirate” (Caucasus Emirate) Dokka Umarov and gave him the Islamic oath (bayah).

Tikhomirov's joining the armed underground caused a mixed reaction among Russian-speaking Muslims. Publicist Heydar Dzhemal, who has repeatedly expressed sympathy for terrorists, called Tikhomirov “a symbol of the new generation in the epic of the Caucasian struggle,” emphasizing that “we have seen preachers (bearers of da’wah) belonging to various ethnic groups before. We saw Avars, Laks, Karachais, Circassians, Arabs... But all these worthy people were either representatives of the Caucasian area, or, at least, belonged to one or another traditionally Muslim people. In this case, for the first time, on behalf of the Caucasus Emirate, a person of Eurasian origin, in whose veins Russian and Buryat blood flows, acts as an ideologist, as an authoritative representative.”

In the following months, Said Buryatsky took part in sabotage operations and militant attacks. While in the forest, he recorded several video messages, audio lectures and articles about jihad and the situation in the North Caucasus, which were published on the “Caucasus Center” and other extremist sites.

Participation in terrorist activities

According to Russian law enforcement agencies, Said Buryatsky was involved in the assassination attempt on the President of Ingushetia Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, organizing a terrorist attack in Nazran. Said Buryatsky also took responsibility for blowing up the Nevsky Express train.

The former intelligence chief of the disbanded Vostok battalion, Khamzat Gairbekov, said: “Tikhomirov was one of the most dangerous figures in the leadership of the Caucasus Emirate - he was responsible for training suicide bombers and ran a network of sabotage schools.”

On July 30, 2009, the Investigation Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Chechen Republic opened a criminal case against Alexander Tikhomirov on the basis of a crime under Part 2 of Article 208 of the Criminal Code of Russia: “participation in an armed formation not provided for by federal law.” The basis for starting an investigation before opening a case was video recordings and photographs in which Tikhomirov appeared with militants and which were posted on the Internet.

Ramzan Kadyrov, assessing Tikhomirov’s calls, said: “This is said by a person who has no idea about Islam. Dokku Umarov and similar bandits listen to him. These people call on Chechens to hate their history, traditions, and culture.”

Terrorist attack in Nazran

Death

As the FSB Central Operations Center reported, “in one of the households (in Ekazhevo) an underground workshop was discovered that was used by bandits to make homemade explosive devices.” “During its inspection, material evidence was found indicating the involvement of T. Kartoev’s bandit group in the bombing of the Nevsky Express in 2009, as well as technical means, identical to those seized from the site of a similar terrorist attack in the Tver region in 2007.”

Ramzan Kadyrov expressed satisfaction with the liquidation of Tikhomirov, noting that the same fate awaits Dokku Umarov. Kadyrov also called Tikhomirov a bandit who worked for Western intelligence services.

According to Vadim Rechkalov: “After being exhausted from running through the mountains, starving and freezing, Said Buryatsky ran into his old friends Kartoev and called his mother in Ulan-Ude from their home phone "Talbis Iblis".

On March 2, during a special operation in Ingushetia, the main ideologist of North Caucasian militants, Alexander Tikhomirov, better known as Said Buryatsky, was killed. Vlast correspondent Sergei Dyupin believes that his death could have an unexpected effect.

The large-scale FSB operation in the Ingush village of Ekazhevo was prepared and carried out in complete secrecy, even from local security officials. “When I arrived at the scene, the FSB officer standing in the cordon thanked me for my help, politely informing me that they did not need it,” one of the leaders of the Ingush Ministry of Internal Affairs commented on the events.

Unofficial sources familiar with the details of the operation claim that its target was not any specific person or gang: simply the special services, receiving and comparing reports from their agents, came to the conclusion that some houses in Ekazhevo could be used by terrorists as staging areas bases, and decided to clear suspicious objects for preventive purposes. The prevention was extremely successful: one of those killed was 28-year-old militant from Buryatia Alexander Tikhomirov, better known in the ranks of the North Caucasian resistance as Sheikh Said Buryatsky. As the participants in the special operation admit, he ended up in the surrounded house by accident - late the night before he came to his friends in Ekazhevo to spend the night, and in the morning he ended up with them under a clean-up operation. The Buryat militant, again according to the security forces, accepted his death calmly: a few minutes before his death, he read his last sermon to his comrades, recording it on a mobile phone video camera, and said goodbye to them. The FSB did not make the video itself public.

The federal authorities attached great importance to the death of Buryatsky: on March 6, the head of the FSB, Alexander Bortnikov, personally reported to President Dmitry Medvedev on the liquidation of the militant in front of a television camera. Similarly, on July 10, 2006, the then head of the FSB, Nikolai Patrushev, reported to President Vladimir Putin about the destruction of Shamil Basayev.

The phenomenon of Said Buryatsky is that he, not belonging to Caucasian or Arab peoples, was able to become almost the main ideologist of the terrorist underground and enjoyed great respect from the militants. This is all the more surprising since Alexander Tikhomirov was born and lived in Ulan-Ude, the majority of whose residents learn about the events taking place in the North Caucasus and Moscow only from television news broadcasts. Both of these regions are called in Buryatia in one word - Russia.

The son of a Russian and a Buryat, Tikhomirov grew up without a father. From childhood, he became interested in religion - first, traditional Buddhism for Buryatia, which he abandoned at the age of 15, converting to Islam. According to some reports, this was due to the appearance of 15-year-old Tikhomirov’s Caucasian stepfather, who professed Islam.

For most of his adult life, Tikhomirov studied Islam: first in two Russian madrassas (in Moscow and in the Orenburg region), then at the Al-Azhar Muslim University in Cairo, and finally in private lessons received from Islamic experts in Egypt and Kuwait.

Returning in 2005, Moscow was already under Muslim name Said Abu Saad al-Buryati, he began working at the Moscow Cathedral Mosque, but after some time he quit due to disagreements with the management. The fact is that, while living abroad, Tikhomirov became an adherent of one of the most radical forms of Islam - Salafia, or Wahhabism, which calls for returning to the roots of religion, eliminating any kind of mediation between man and God, and waging an armed struggle for the spread of Islam throughout the world. As a Salafist preacher, Said Buryatsky gained international fame. The young scientist reasonably criticized other movements in Islam, entering into discussions with world-class religious authorities, and his lectures, written in simple and accessible language, were very popular among Muslim youth in Russia and the CIS countries. By the age of 26, Said Buryatsky was already considered a sheikh in the Salafi community - an elder and an expert on religion. The main topic his sermons were a theoretical justification for the need for jihad - an armed struggle for the rights of Muslims and self-sacrifice in this struggle.

The popularity of the young scientist among Muslims grew, however, as Said Buryatsky himself admitted, his supporters increasingly began to reproach him for insincerity, making it clear that beautiful words"armchair" jihadist are very at odds with his own way of life. The preacher, as they say, accepted the challenge: in May 2008, he came to the North Caucasus, secretly contacted the local gang underground, swore allegiance to its leader Dok Umarov, who proclaimed himself the military emir of the Caucasus Emirate, and joined his detachment.

“Only here did I understand the essence of all our kitchen jamaats (Muslim community.— "Power") and online mujahideen (fighters for the faith.— "Power") who don’t want to come here,” Said Buryatsky wrote to his wife. “A real jamaat is only where you went through difficulties together.”

These letters, after the death of Buryatsky, were posted on one of the websites of Caucasian extremists. Based on them, one can reconstruct the image of a terrorist preacher, not devoid of sentimentality.

Constant work with future “live bombs” did not pass without a trace for the Wahhabi ideologist himself. At some point, the propagandist’s psyche failed

By his own admission, Tikhomirov, who was not distinguished by his heroic physique and health, did not turn out to be a militant. He informed his wife that he gradually got used to life in hiding and even fell in love with “these mountains and this forest”; I got used to the cold and damp (“you won’t believe it, it sometimes rains for four days without stopping”), long walks on foot and even the roar of shells, under which you have to sleep (“when they stop shooting, you can’t sleep anymore”). Immediately, the scientist who went out for jihad complains of pain in his back, which appeared either from drafts, or from the fact that he “strained himself on the load.” According to Said Buryatsky, his comrades, sparing him during his marches on foot, almost forcibly took away his heavy luggage, but his back still hurt, so he had to spend almost the entire winter in a dugout.

The main base of Emir Doku Umarov, according to Said Buryatsky, was about an hour’s walk from the small village of Dattykh, located on the border of Chechnya and Ingushetia, in a ravine between the hills. Taking advantage of the natural shelter, the militants, as he writes, thoroughly settled in this place: they put up tents, built dugouts, one of which housed a dining room, and even built “a mosque for 20-25 people from oilcloth and frame” (according to the FSB, the number the detachment consisted of about 60 people).

The shelter was named New Dattykh, and the passage between the dugouts was called Umarov Avenue. However, in May last year, the base was declassified by one of the residents of the real Dattykh. Federal Command considered that it was too risky to storm the Umarov fortified area with special forces, and it was simply razed to the ground missile strikes from the air. Examining the corpses after the air raid, experts expected to find the body of Doku Umarov among them, but the extremist leader managed to escape the attack and withdraw about half of his squad. Among the survivors was Said Buryatsky.

Around this time, Emir Umarov, apparently, entrusted the failed militant with the ideological training of the members of his detachment, and it was in this capacity that Said Buryatsky made full use of his fundamental knowledge and organizational talent.

On June 22 last year, in the Center-Kamaz microdistrict of Nazran, an unknown terrorist in a Toyota Camry filled with explosives rammed the motorcade of the President of Ingushetia, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov. As a result of the assassination attempt, one of the security guards of the head of the republic was killed, and Yevkurov himself was seriously injured. His life was literally miraculously saved by Moscow doctors.

“I also prepared the brother who went to Yevkurov,” Said Buryatsky wrote to his wife, making it clear that on June 22 it was not his first student who was blown up. According to the ideologist, the militant went to his death “without worrying at all, as if he had gone to have tea.”

About a month later, on July 26, a pedestrian suicide bomber blew himself up in front of the theater center on Teatralnaya Square in Grozny, killing four police officers who stopped him before entering the hall and two bystanders. The terrorist attack was apparently being prepared for Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, who was planning to visit the theater that day, but was late for the performance and was not injured. Said Buryatsky didn’t even have to prepare this terrorist. In any case, he told his wife that “Kharun, who exploded in Grozny,” committed a self-detonation without any preliminary ideological treatment. “I saw in him a desire to die, which resembled wild hunger,” wrote Buryatsky.

Three days later, the remains of Shahid Harun were identified. At the same time, the President of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, for the first time called Tikhomirov the main ideologist of the bandit underground and his personal enemy. “Buryatsky and similar terrorists turned a normal person, the young athlete Rustam Mukhadiev, into a suicide bomber, pumping him full of various intoxicating drugs and subjecting him to psychological treatment,” Kadyrov said. “The terrorists’ days are numbered. Police officers and other departments are on their trail.” It was not possible to quickly catch the organizers of the terrorist attack in Grozny, but the police in Chechnya suffered new losses on the same day when loud statements were made. On July 30, in the village of Valerik, Achkhoy-Martan district, law enforcement officers accidentally shot a policeman-driver from Yakutsk, Arkady Savvinov, and his partner, who were sent to Chechnya, mistaking a Yakut for a wanted Buryat. A criminal case was initiated against those who used weapons, and the emergency received a loud response in police circles. In the OMON detachment under the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Buryatia, the question of refusing business trips to the North Caucasus.

Another serious crime that investigators suspect Said Buryatsky of organizing is a terrorist attack in Nazran, committed on the morning of August 17 last year. Then the suicide bomber driving a bomb-laden Gazelle, ramming the gate, drove into the courtyard of the city police department, where the police were lined up for the morning divorce. As a result of the explosion, 25 people were killed, more than a hundred were injured, and the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ingushetia, Ruslan Meyriev, lost his post. Shortly after the explosion, a video appeared on the Internet with the participation of Said Buryatsky, in which he explains the need for self-sacrifice in jihad, sitting in the back of a Gazelle next to a two-hundred-liter metal barrel filled, according to him, with explosives. This video gave reason to believe that Buryatsky himself was driving the car that exploded. However, two days after the attack, militant websites denied this, and the would-be suicide bomber himself soon publicly explained that he was only going to carry out this action, but at the last moment the command entrusted it to another executor.

According to Ingush operatives, having headed the ideological service of the “Imarat”, Said Buryatsky formed an international brigade of 30 of his closest supporters, who, using connections in Islamic world, sent me for training in an extremist madrasah located in one of the neighboring countries. The militants returned from there as supposedly convinced supporters of istishhad (fanatical readiness for self-sacrifice). According to police officers monitoring all suicide bombings committed in the North Caucasus, only nine students of Said Buryatsky have self-destructed so far. The remaining 21 are waiting for commands and target instructions from their military emir, Doku Umarov.

Constant work with future “live bombs” did not pass without a trace for the Wahhabi ideologist himself. At some point, the propagandist’s psyche failed. "I'm so tired of this dunya (earthly life.— "Power"), as if he had already lived for centuries,” Said Buryatsky wrote to his wife. “You know, I began to dream of brothers who had gone to Istishhad operations. Abu Dujana, Adam, Bilal, Harun, Abu Muslim and many more brothers are no longer there. And I’m still alive... You know, every time they leave, terrible fatigue falls on me... I will never forget those who helped me carry things, with whom we were in the cold and spent the night in a tent under a layer of snow , with whom we sat in the rain under an oilcloth in the forest, with whom we shared the last candy. I have been asking Dokku for a long time to allow me to go to istishhad, but every time I am denied this - they say you are still needed here. I myself don’t think so and I envy those who went down this path..."

On March 2, in Ekazhevo, the ideological “death machine” was finally stopped completely, and this can be considered an unconditional success for the Russian special services. However, if you look at the problem in the long term, we can assume that the death of Said Buryatsky is fraught with almost great danger than all the “living bombs” prepared by him during his lifetime. A young man of non-Muslim origin, who converted to Islam, studied it perfectly and told others about it, became a respected religious figure, even while remaining in the status of a “kitchen” mujahid. After Said Buryatsky abandoned worldly values ​​in favor of armed struggle, his rating completely soared to prohibitive heights. From the point of view of his comrades, the martyrdom of the scientist may well turn him into a symbol of the armed struggle against the infidels. In this case, extremists will not even need to waste energy on promoting their views - the very example of a young Muslim who said his word and confirmed it with deeds can attract new supporters to the side of the armed underground. Moreover, thanks to the international image of Said Buryatsky, their number may well include not only natives of the North Caucasian republics, but also people generally far from the problems of this region.

“With his life and his death, Said Buryatsky made a huge contribution to strengthening the ranks of the armed opposition in the North Caucasus,” the head of the Islamic Committee of Russia, Heydar Dzhemal, is convinced. “The ideas that he propagated will now acquire the character of absolute truth for his followers, since this man paid for your beliefs own life".

To the question of whether any other scenario was possible other than the physical elimination of Said Buryatsky, Heydar Dzhemal, after thinking, did not find an answer. “His ultimate goal, as I think, was to reformat the Russian and world space, and any negotiations with the authorities on this topic would certainly reach a dead end.”

SAID BURYATSKY

Today I had a dream in which I myself said that I had three weeks to live, I don’t know why this is, maybe because I can’t wait to leave here faster. I saw a woman in a dream, I told her to leave me, I told her that anyway, in three weeks I would leave this life.

One of last letters Said Buryatsky

Continuing the theme of self-sacrifice of terrorists begun in the introduction, it can be noted that in the works of modern theorists of jihad, the concepts of jihad and shahada are martyrdom on the battlefield - inseparable. The willingness to sacrifice oneself in the name of an idea is an integral part of the psychology of someone who wages jihad. In his book “Good News to the Slaves about the Virtues of Jihad,” one of the most famous propagandists of global jihad, Palestinian Abdullah Azzam, listing the various virtues of the shahadah, mentions a hadith that says that the martyr’s sins will be forgiven with the release of the first drop of blood; Shahid sees his place in Paradise; it is decorated with the decoration of iman (faith. - I.F.); he is married to the Gurias; he escapes torment in the grave; the most terrible of days (i.e., the Day of Judgment) is safe for him; he is crowned with a crown of honor, one pearl of which is better than the dunya (earthly world) and everything that is in it; he marries seventy-two houris; he is given intercession (for the worthy) for seventy people from his relatives. Another hadith cited by Azzam says that a martyr, when dying, does not feel pain: “when a martyr dies, he feels the same as you feel when pinched.”

Islamic preacher Said Buryatsky also speaks about self-sacrifice. When discussing the causes of Islamic terror, he operates not with the categories of the Sunnah and the Koran, but with Gumilev’s term “passionarity”. In the article “Istish-had: between truth and lies,” Said Buryatsky explains the desire that arises in a Muslim to become a martyr: “Once upon a time, while studying the works of L. N. Gumilyov, a famous historian, in my youth I came across his concept of “passionarity,” which he introduced into the study of history, considering it as one of the ways of approaching the systematization of history. We will not consider other versions of the historical approach, and will not pay attention to the “civilizational” approach of Toynbee, the concepts of Jean-Baptiste Vico, Spengler, and even the great historian of Islam Ibn Khaldun. But I was always interested in his idea of ​​“passionarity,” the theory that the reasons for the emergence of ethnic groups are directly related to this phenomenon. By this term he meant the general aspiration of the people, ethnic group to achieve main goal, for the sake of which people were ready for great achievements. This, in his opinion, was the reason why ethnic groups appeared seemingly out of nowhere, and the drop in the level of passionarity led to the disappearance of another ethnic group. But the main thing is not this, but the fact that the top of the passionary peak under symbol P6 in the diagram Gumilyov put precisely self-sacrifice, sacrifice to achieve the task. If we begin to reason impartially, we will understand that Gumilyov was right - after all, it was precisely when people were ready to sacrifice their lives for the sake of an idea that not only states, but also entire nations arose.”

Said then describes his impressions of the operations in which he himself participated. And these observations are very valuable for us, since, for obvious reasons, there is very little documentary evidence of such events. Said refutes widespread allegations that martyrs go to their death under the influence of suggestion or psychotropic drugs. He writes that once upon a time, while reading classics of literature, he many times came across works that described the behavior of people awaiting execution in a cell. They were all similar in one thing - the person sentenced to death in the last hours of his life experienced such intense horror that he sweated, even while in a cold room. “Several years ago, I specifically watched videos of executions in the United States, and realized that the classics of literature were right, and the condemned man was sweating so much when he was taken out of the cell that his shirt could be wrung out. Later, when for the first time in my life I saw a man going to his death in a car full of explosives, I expected to see the same effect. Yes, this brother and I had many difficulties, we knew each other well, but still... We spent several days before the operation together and all this time I tried to understand what he was feeling at this time? And I was delighted that he felt nothing but peace, as he was going to meet Allah, and then I realized how different a believer is from a kafir (non-believer. - I.F.) at the time of death. The brother who got into the car and went to Evkurov was calm as always, and his look, full of determination, confirmed this. There was no trembling, no shaking legs, no dry mouth, no pallor, no streams of sweat. When he got into that car, we hugged and made dua (prayer. - I.F.) to meet at Eternal life. I looked into his eyes and saw no hint of fear there. There was confidence in a quick meeting, as if a person was leaving for another country, knowing full well that it exists. And just as now you cannot prove to a person that, for example, the USA does not really exist, so he was convinced that a meeting with Allah lay ahead and he hoped for forgiveness. Later I saw many brothers who passed this way, who gave their lives in the path of Allah, but I can say openly that everyone's behavior was different, as were their secondary intentions. Someone left for surgery with anxiety in their chest, but only because they were afraid of their sins and the answer for them. Others followed this path as if for a walk, without even worrying about pressing the current switch button. I remember how our brother Ammar was worried about whether he would be able to make a turn in the Gazelle to break through the gates of the police department, how we walked and explored this place before the operation. Some went to istishhad only for the pleasure of Allah, others also for this, but the second intention was to achieve forgiveness of sins. Therefore, it cannot be said that all Mujahideen who went to Istishhad are the same, but we can try to distinguish general pattern in this phenomenon. If you ask my opinion about what unites all those who have committed istishhad, I will answer: this is the firm intention to die in the path of Allah; in their eyes I saw nothing other than the thirst for death; they no longer lived in our dimension. I will say something that those infidels who consider me an “ideologist” of suicide bombers, who believe that with my sermons I push people to do this, will not believe. Remember one simple fact:

everyone who went to istishhad made a decision without my sermons or anyone’s direct influence. No, and there was no one who could be processed to this extent - you can talk about it for hours, but until Allah gives him firmness and determination, he will never be able to voluntarily press the button. Even if someone is artificially charged with this impulse, it will soon go out and there will be nothing left. This decision comes from the depths of the soul, where a person begins to desire a meeting with Allah, and He gives him the opportunity to do this. And today those who are ready to go to istishhad have come to this decision themselves; Of course, I agree that to some extent they were influenced by da'wats (calls to Islam. - I.F.) and the works of scientists, but the final decision always remains with the individual himself.”

What is it like life path this Russian theorist of jihad or, as he is called, the “mujahid-internationalist” and the “Islamic Che Guevara”? The case of Said Buryatsky is truly unique, since, as Heydar Dzhemal wrote, “for the first time, on behalf of the Emirate, the Caucasus appears as an ideologist, as an authoritative representative of a person of Eurasian origin, in whose veins Russian and Buryat blood flows.” Alexander Tikhomirov was born in 1982 in Ulan-Ude. In his family, like many in Siberia, there were people of mixed nationalities - among his ancestors there were Irkutsk Buryats, Russians, and his paternal grandmother was Kazakh. Contrary to Internet articles, Said was not a Buddhist and never studied at a datsan. And the entire biography of him published in the media early years is a complete fabrication and a collection of absurdities. Said studied at a regular school. Teachers of that time spoke well of his abilities. An inquisitive mind, a thirst for knowledge, a search for the meaning of life, dissatisfaction with the world around him and the desire to change it drove him forward. He read a lot, mainly books on history and philosophy, free time spent time in city libraries and, in the end, found answers for myself in Islamic literature. According to his mother, after reading the translation of the Koran into Russian, he said: “I understood what I want in life. I want to accept Islam, I want to study this religion and inform all people so that everyone lives as fairly as is written in this Book.” He found an ideal utopian world in the distant past, in the time of the covenants of the Prophet and his closest companions, the Ashabs. He was seventeen years old then. This decision was somewhat influenced by his mother, who converted to Islam for him two years later. According to her, surprisingly, this happened under the influence of Father Alexander Men’s book “Son of Man,” from which she learned that Jesus called God by the name Ellah, that is, Allah. Said tried to do namaz on his own, he lacked a few Islamic books, and the nearest mosque was found in Irkutsk. Her imam was quite surprised by the appearance of a guy from Buryatia and gave him a referral to study at the Moscow Islamic University. Said studied there for two years, after which he went to continue his studies in Egypt. For the next three years, he studied at one of the world's largest centers for the study of the Arabic language, Fajr, and studied theology at the prestigious Islamic University Al-Azhar. Said did not finish his studies at the university, according to him, due to problems with the Egyptian intelligence services, which seems to be true, judging by several only Lately mass arrests and deportations Russian students Egyptian authorities. After returning from Egypt in 2003, Said continued to work and study in Moscow. And in 2004, I trained for four months Arabic in Kuwait. Returning to Moscow, he was engaged in self-education, served at the Moscow Cathedral Mosque and worked in the religious publishing house “Umma”. While working at the publishing house, Said got married. One of his acquaintances reports that “Said’s wife said that when he got a job at the Umma publishing house, they told him what salary he would receive, and he said: “No, this is too much for me.” And I cut back on myself. Naturally, the wife did not understand this, but he shamed her: “There is a roof, there is food, what are you still dissatisfied with, woman.” Selflessness and renunciation of property are a characteristic motif from the biographies of future terrorists. Here, by way of comparison, is what V. E. Vladimirov writes about Spiridonova: “From an early age, my parents had high hopes for Maria; She grew up as a smart, capable girl, she was very kind and warm-hearted by nature; She became attached to people and knew how to appreciate their kind attitude. She loved to share things and toys with others; She didn’t know how to refuse requests and often gave away the last thing she had. When one day she met a poor girl and she found out that she had no shoes, she gave her hers, remaining in the old, holey ones... She did not recognize her property; everything that belonged to her she gave to others; anyone could use what she had.” This refusal of everyday excesses, of small things Everyday life also anticipates the subsequent readiness for the biggest sacrifice - one’s own life. “But you know, I understood the main Truth, for the sake of which it is worth going all this way and losing everything - I understood what all this dunya equals and how damned it is, I realized that a person needs so little - an oilcloth on his head, a rug and a sleeping bag, and he survives everywhere, he will carry everything he needs from this dunya in one backpack. So why compete to achieve this dunya if it costs nothing in front of Allah?” Said later wrote in one of his letters from the forest.

During the period of his life in Moscow, Said traveled a lot with sermons in the regions of Russia and the CIS countries. Speaking from the position of traditional Salafi (i.e., “primordial”, rejecting later admixtures) Islam, he condemned other movements and sects like Shiism, Sufism, etc. Said Buryatsky’s lectures brought him popularity among radical youth. In 2007, Said made the Hajj to Mecca and Medina, where he recorded the lecture series “Holy Mecca.” And in 2008 he went to the Caucasus to join the Mujahideen. For many listeners of his lectures, this step was unexpected. Of course, joining the ranks of the Mujahideen is an extreme action, but going underground in itself is not some kind of leap for a person raised in a Muslim environment. Many Islamic scholars and preachers already eke out a semi-legal existence due to constant pressure and harassment from the authorities. For Said Buryatsky, this transition was the logical conclusion of all his mental and spiritual development, his way of life. In addition, his consistency and internal honesty played a big role here. The search for his own integrity, the desire to straighten himself in three directions - thought, word, deed - brought him to this point. Having preached jihad to others, he could no longer remain aloof. In the article “A Look at Jihad from the Inside: After a Year,” Said himself describes what made him go on the warpath: “And every time you start making a call to carry out jihad, or talk about the times of the Companions and their attitude towards it , know that the test is coming. And Allah will put a person in a situation where he will be forced to make his choice - will he be a Mujahid, then will he show patience in jihad... This test came when I was ready, but not enough to give an answer right away , when I received a letter from the Emir of the Caucasus with an offer to join the Mujahideen. I picked up this letter and felt as if my whole life flashed before my eyes, and it became clear that this was the moment about which Abdullah ibn Masud said: “If Allah tests His servant by placing him in a place where he will have to say something for the sake of Allah and he will remain silent, then he will never return to the level of iman that he was at before.” At such a moment, you begin to understand that if you refuse, you will never be able to get out of the humiliation that the Messenger of Allah said about... But if you make a choice in favor of jihad, it will change your whole life so much that you will lose everything - both family and property, and about this Allah said: “We will certainly test you with fear, hunger and loss of property and people.” I stood and it seemed to me that years had passed before I gave the answer, although I was sure in advance that I could say this, but only with the support of Allah Almighty, for He said in the Quran: “Allah strengthens those who believe , a firm word in this life and in the Eternal.” And this “firm word” comes when you have to say something only for the sake of Allah - and in my case it was a positive answer. " Tell your brothers that I will come"- I said this, and it was as if a heavy burden had been lifted from my soul, because after these words the path was marked, and this is one of the turning points in a person’s life, when, having made his choice, he can never go back... I have said a lot about the jihad of the Companions, about the battles of the Tabiyin era, about the liberation campaigns of the Caliphate - and the time has come for me to pass this test myself. 2 months after this event, I came to the territory of the Caucasus Emirate and saw with my own eyes our brothers the Mujahideen.”

Soon after this, a recording appeared in Caucasus mountains a video message where he, in the form of a Mujahid and with weapons in his hands, speaks together with Doku Umarov and Supyan Abdullaev - one of the oldest Mujahidin, a member of the Islamic Renaissance Party in the 80s. The appeal was confirmation that Said had reached the mountains. Of course, this act of his, giving additional romanticism to his appearance, found many enthusiastic reviews among both born and newly converted Muslims and, I think, encouraged some of them to follow his example.

Said first loudly declared himself as a terrorist on June 22, 2009, when a Toyota with explosives wedged into the motorcade of the President of Ingushetia Yevkurov. As a result of the explosion, the president's security guard was killed and he himself was seriously wounded. Subsequently, Said Buryatsky was accused of preparing the explosion. He didn't deny it. In one of his letters, Said wrote: “You know, I began to dream about those brothers who went to Istishhad operations, like Harun and others, they are alive, as they are, and for some reason it seems to me that I should soon go to them if Allah grants such mercy. I also prepared the brother who went to Yevkurov, but you won’t believe how much I wanted to go instead of him. You know, he went to his death as if he had gone to have tea, without worrying at all, and when I heard the explosion, I felt bad, I realized that he had really left here once and for all.” Said repeatedly wrote how hard it was for him to bear the loss of friends, who remained less and less nearby. But the harder it was for him to bear this loss, the more firmly he believed in meeting them in heaven and the more strongly he strove for it.

Just a month after the assassination attempt on Yevkurov, on July 26, 2009, an explosion occurred on the Theater Square in Grozny at the entrance to the concert hall before the start of the performance. Six people were killed, including four high-ranking police officers. Immediately after the explosion, Ramzan Kadyrov, who was also supposed to come to this performance, but was late, glorified Said Buryatsky throughout the country, calling him the main organizer of the terrorist attack, and announced a hunt for him. On July 30, Chechen police shot dead a suspicious Asian man riding in a car. However, he turned out to be not Said Buryatsky, but a policeman from Yakutia. His colleague from Tyumen died along with him.

A few weeks later, on the morning of August 17, a GAZelle filled with explosives rammed the gates of the Nazran City Department of Internal Affairs. This is how one of the largest terrorist attacks in the Caucasus occurred, as a result of which, according to official data, 25 people were killed and 136 were injured. Soon after this, a video appeared on the Internet, from which it emerged that the perpetrator of the terrorist attack was Said Buryatsky. Many already considered him a suicide bomber, but after some time a video refutation appeared, in which Said said that the error arose due to improper installation, and there was another person inside the GAZelle. According to him, he only participated in the preparation of the terrorist attack and equipped a barrel with explosives.

Some of his haters were annoyed by this fact, indignant that the terrorist was still alive, some of his former admirers were disappointed in their hero. That time death passed him by. But not for long. In the North Caucasus, those who take the path of jihad usually do not live long. Early in the morning of March 2, 2010, special forces blocked the Ingush village of Ekazhevo. 15 people were arrested, including influential local residents and police officers. Then the assault on several houses began. During the special operation, 8 people were killed on the street and in houses, and 1 was killed by federal forces. One of the dead was identified as Said Buryatsky. Next to him, according to press reports, they found a mobile phone with a video of the last sermon and a laptop. The intelligence services reported a successful operation. Said was credited with almost all the major terrorist attacks of recent times, including the bombing of the Nevsky Express. The newspapers, as usual, burst out with one-sided assessments of his activities or malicious curses against him. Said, of course, is a terrorist, and I am not going to whitewash him. But it's not that simple. In no country - be it Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan or Chechnya - does jihad arise out of nowhere. Jihad is the result of a complex tangle of social, political, economic, religious and cultural problems. And killing terrorists will not solve it.

And Said, whose sincerity even many of his enemies did not doubt, became for the radicals a martyr who died for the faith. For them, his fame will only grow stronger over the years. All we have to do is re-read his notes from the series “Heroes of Truth and Lies”, these stories from the lives of his familiar martyrs. A kaleidoscope of forever passing away faces, events and places flashes by. These diaries published on the Internet are the only adequate source depicting the life of the Mujahideen from the inside. Said, the chronicler and writer of everyday life in the forest, had an undoubted literary talent, which is worth, for example, this passage: “Actually, I have always been interested in walking where you come across old traces of Allah’s warriors. Once Harun and I found near Arshtami old database Mujahideen with destroyed dugouts and old dishes. We took some of the suitable dishes with us, but even Harun could not remember anything about this base. This archaeological monument of the Mujahideen of the past stuck in my memory so much that I began to ask everyone about it. And after a long search, Allah granted me the opportunity to find someone who remembered her. This man turned out to be our Professor, Abdullah Azzam (namesake of the Palestinian theologian. - I.F.) - only he could remember that they founded this base many years ago together with Khamzat Gelayev. The professor turned on his search engine, but he still couldn’t remember who was alive besides him at that time, among those who founded this database. And if it were not for Abdullah Azzam, who told the story of this base, it would have remained a blank spot in the history of jihad in the Caucasus. These are also archaeological sites modern history, about which few people even remember - but what about those monuments of the Mujahideen of the past that are already overgrown with grass? I remember about the ancient caves of the abreks of the past, which we found on the top of Nukhkort near Bamut. I was amazed by how they were carved out of the sandstone - there were over 40 small caves located in several levels in a semicircle. They were connected to each other by narrow corridors, through which they had to crawl only in the dark. From the outside, these caves are closed from prying eyes by dense bushes, but from each exit there is a view all the way to Alkhan-Kala, a suburb of Grozny. I also saw the ancient caves of the abreks on Fartang, where caves with a triangular entrance for horses were carved into the rocks; but now there is no one left who could tell the story of who carved these caves and who used them for jihad. Here and there our brothers found old rifle casings with numbers and designations unknown to us. In many caves you can still find artifacts that remained from the Mujahideen of the past - shell casings, scraps of fabric and much more, but all these objects are mute. They will never talk about those Mujahideen who inhabited this area, about those who became martyrs in those difficult years, and much more. This is if we talk only about the legacy of the Mujahideen of the past - and those ruins of villages and ancient settlements that remained in Myalkhist, Yalkhor-mokhk with its deepest caves, and in the highlands of the Urus-Martan region... And now I continue to think about the fact that it will still pass there have been many years of jihad in the Caucasus, and generations will succeed each other; and each new stream of Mujahideen, when they come across archaeological monuments of warriors of the past, will no longer be able to remember who these dugouts and pilots belonged to.” Allah grants the Mujahideen his immortality, but we, secular people, see immortality in something else. The same Said of Buryat, who sent people to death, blessing them for the Shahada, extended their earthly life with his notes. Now these diaries will remain a literary monument to himself.