Akhmat Abdulhamidovich Kadyrov

Akhmat Abdulhamidovich Kadyrov – a Russian and Chechen statesman, political and religious figure. The first President of the Chechen Republic as part of the Russian Federation. Hero of the Russian Federation. He was born on 23 August 1951 in Karaganda. He graduated from secondary school, the Mir Arab madrasa in Bukhara and the Tashkent Islamic Institute. After his studies he served as deputy imam of the Gudermes central mosque, and then founded the first Islamic Institute in the North Caucasus in the Kurchaloyevsky district, heading it for a year.

 

From 1995 to 2000 Akhmat Kadyrov was the Supreme Mufti of Chechnya. In the late 1990s he actively opposed the spread of Wahhabism and the introduction of Sharia. In 1999 Kadyrov sided with the federal forces, and in 2000 Vladimir Putin appointed him head of the administration of the Chechen Republic. In 2003 he was elected president of the republic. Akhmat Kadyrov tragically died on 9 May 2004 as a result of a terrorist attack at the Dynamo Stadium in Grozny and was buried in his native village.