Top Chechen envoy Mr Akhmed Zakayev, detained by Danish authorities last week after Russia accused him of links to the Moscow hostage siege, has warned there could be more commando-style attacks.
But in an interview with the German magazine Focusconducted before his arrest, Mr Zakayev denied any involvement in the hostage-taking by Chechen rebels who held 800 people captive in a Moscow theatre last month.
"This group decided and organised everything all by itself. We don't have any control over such people. That is why the situation could skid out of control. I don't rule out other similar actions," he told the magazine, due to appear on Monday.
Denmark yesterday rejected an extradition request from Russia for Mr Zakayev, the main envoy of rebel Chechen president Mr Aslan Maskhadov, saying Moscow failed to provide proof of its accusation that he is a terrorist.
Mr Zakayev was detained Wednesday by Danish police acting on a Russian arrest warrant claiming he was involved in the hostage siege, which ended in bloodshed when Russian forces stormed the theatre. At least 119 hostages are known to have died, alongside nearly all of the 50 Chechen rebels.
He told Focushe did not believe "foreign forces" were behind the Chechen commandos, saying they were "desperate people who wanted to sacrifice themselves."
The siege has thrown the spotlight back on the "forgotten war" in Chechnya, where Russian forces have been fighting separatists for the past three years in what it terms a "counter-terrorism operation."
But Mr Zakayev said: "We have no link with al-Qaeda or any other international terrorist organisation."
He also claimed that the hostage-takers had told a Chechen envoy during the siege that they had no intention of killing any of the hostages and were seeking a meeting with a representative of Russian President Vladimir Putin last Saturday, the day the Russian forces moved in to the theatre.
AFP