[citation needed] In November 1990, he became the deputy chairman of the newly formed All-National Congress of the Chechen People (NCChP), which was led by Dzhokhar Dudayev and which ousted the Soviet-era leadership.

[4] In 1997, during the signing of the Russian-Chechen Peace Treaty in Moscow, Yandarbiyev famously forced Russian President Yeltsin to change seats at a negotiating table so he would be received like a head of sovereign state.

[citation needed] In August–September 1999, Yandarbiyev was assumed as a key figure behind the invasion by the Islamic International Brigade-led coalition of Islamist guerrillas on the neighboring Russian Republic of Dagestan.

[7] Yandarbiyev played a key role in directing funding from foundations in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf in order to support a radical Chechen faction dubbed the Special Purpose Islamic Regiment, a militant group responsible for the Moscow theater hostage crisis.

[8] In January 2004, he was interviewed extensively in Qatar for the BBC Four documentary The Smell of Paradise, where the film-makers called him the "spiritual leader of the Chechens and a poet on the road to jihad.

[9] It was initially unclear who was responsible for the blast, but suspicion immediately fell on Russian intelligence agencies SVR and GRU, both of which denied any involvement, and cited internal feuding among the Chechen rebel leadership.

[13] The trial proceedings were closed to the public after the defendants claimed that the Qatari police had tortured them in the first days after their arrest, when they had been held incommunicado; the two Russians alleged that they had suffered beatings, sleep deprivation and attacks by guard dogs.

Based on these torture allegations and that the two officers were arrested within an extraterritorial compound belonging to the Russian Embassy, Russia demanded the immediate release of its citizens.

They were represented by the attorney of the law firm founded by Nikolai Yegorov, a friend and fellow student of Vladimir Putin at Leningrad State University.