A terrorist attack at the Istanbul airport led to a sharp confrontation among political forces in Georgia. After the attack on the Ataturk airport the head of the US National Security Committee of Congress Michael McCaul said in an interview with CNN that Ahmed Chatayev, the organizer of the terrorist attack was an active participant of military actions in the North Caucasus. He is also known as "one-armed Ahmed."
Former Georgian President, Mikhail Saakashvili, the head of the administration of the Odessa region in Ukraine and the head of the Georgian opposition party, United National Movement, made an accusatory statement. According to him, Chatayev was arrested by Georgian special services in September 2012 when Saakashvili was President of Georgia. "This occurred during the liqudation of the criminal group that tried to cut its way through Georgia to the North Caucasus,'' the governor of Odessa said in an interview for the broadcasting company Rustavi 2, but then the power changed and the new government led by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili released Chatayev. After that, he moved to Syria and joined Daesh."
However, the ex-president did not mention that Chatayev was not among the gunmen who tried to reach Dagestan in September 2012. At that time the "one-armed man" lived in an apartment in Tbilisi. The current head of the Odessa Police, Giorgi Lortkipanidze, was the head of the anti-terrorist center of the MIA of Georgi, ordered him to visit negotiations with fanatics in order to persuade them to surrender.
They refused and were destroyed. 11 terrorists were liquidated and three employees of the Georgian law enforcement agencies were killed. Chatayevdidn't fulfill his mission and was arrested on charges of illegal possession of weapons (grenadesF-1), although his lawyers could easily prove the absurdity of those accusations, and Chatayev was released.
He lived in an apartment in Tbilisi after years of violent adventures despite the fact that several countries accused "one-armed Ahmad" of terrorism. The Chairman of the Georgian Parliamentary Committee on Defence and Security, Irakli Sesiashvili, commented on this. He said that when Chatayev was arrested in Ukraine the issue of his extradition to Russia was being discussed. Then Georgian special services wanted to use "one-armed Ahmad" for long-term cooperation with terrorists. They instituted a false criminal case against him, extradited and recruited under the threat of imprisonment and settled in a conspiratorial flat. "To our shame, it turns out that Chatayev was an agent of the Georgian special services. Saakashvili and Lordkipanidze should be responsible for this,'' Irakli Sesiashvili concluded.
