Career
Atayev was an ethnic Balkar and started his military career as a volunteer fighting in Chechnya. Muslim Atayev began his military career training in one of the Pankisi Gorge training camps in Georgia. Atayev led a group of an estimated 20-30 volunteers from Kabardino-Balkaria in the Ruslan Gelayev-led field force that crossed back into the North Caucasus republics in the autumn of 2002.
After fighting in Ingushetia, Atayev led the KBR guerrillas back into their home republic, creating the Kabardino-Balkarian Islamic Jamaat Yarmuk in August 2004 as a local independent militant operational group.
Muslim Atayev was succeeded by Anzor Astemirov. The mothers had written to the prosecutor, asking him to return Leila to them, alive or dead.
His office publicly denies that any such request has been made. An IWPR correspondent observed the January 27 assault from 100 metres away, and witnessed special forces carrying a stretcher on which there was something wrapped in white material out of the besieged building an hour and a half before the end of the operation.
The bundle looked like the body of a child.
They put it into a police car with dark-tinted windows.