Putin reports on North Caucasus militants’ contacts with US Special Service representatives in Azerbaijan
At the beginning of the 2000s the Russian special services recorded direct contacts between the North Caucasus militants and the representatives of the American Special Service in Azerbaijan, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in the film "President" aired by Russia 1 TV channel, according to the portal Lenta.ru.
“They just really helped even with transport there,” the Russian President said adding that after learning that, he immediately turned to the then-president of the US for clarifications and the latter promised to deal with that problem.
Echo of Moscow adds that according to Putin, those talks with the US President, George W. Bush, did not change the situation as Washington made it clear to Moscow that the US had a right “to maintain contacts with all the opposition forces in Russia.”
The Russian media have more than once reported on the activities or arrests of Azerbaijani extremists and terrorists in Russia or Azerbaijan-born sponsors of different terrorist organizations. Azerbaijani citizen Ilham Islamly, the Nizhny Novgorod leader of the religious organization Nurjular, which is banned in Russia, was arrested in Podmoskovye in 2010. In 2012, there were reports that the department of National Central Bureau of Interpol detained Azerbaijan-born member of a terrorist group on the territory of the Russian Federation. Being on the territory of Omsk Oblast, Russia he financed the leader of the terrorist group in November 2008. In 2013, NTV TV channel reported that the police held a special operation in Murmansk Oblast, Russia to detain a merchant from Azerbaijan who was found out to be an extremist. He was found guilty of committing crimes under part 1 of Article 280 of Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Public appeals to carry out extremist activity”) and part 1 of Article 282 of Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Incitement of religious enmity and hatred”).