"a lack of firm, centralised command", while the commander of the airborne troops, General Gennady Troshev, alleged an act of treason. In another controversy, Major Simonov's widow Nadya shocked the generals by refusing to accept the medal her husband had been awarded posthumously for his role in the battle, protesting the war in Chechnya. According to the investigation, the ambush was conducted by a multinational fighting group that was led by a Saudi-born Arab field commander known as Abu Quteiba and belonged to the Islamic International Brigade forces of Amir Ibn Khattab. It was composed mostly of men hailing from the "Wahhabi" Dagestani village of Karamakhi, which declared self-rule in the late 1990s and was destroyed by federal troops during a crackdown on Islamic separatism in the republic in 1999. Seven suspected former members of this formation (including four former residents of Karamakhi and natives of Tatarstan and Karachay-Cherkessia) were later arrested and tried together by Dagestan's Supreme Court. In 2001, five were convicted for directly participating in the attack. The court's ruling was based on the statements given by two of the accused and then withdrawn at the start of the trial, when they said they had made them under threat of torture by FSB investigators. OMON officer Sergei Udachin (or Sergei Sobyanin in some reports) died when he was shot while filming with his video camcorder. A rebel fighter later picked up his camera and used it to document the rebel side of the conflict, including for the purposes of recording killed and captured Russian troops. Eventually, footage of the attack became public when CNN discovered it, and broadcast it for the first time as part of its documentary program Deadlock: Russia's Forgotten War in 2002. The program also included interviews with Russian survivors of the incident. References Conflicts in 2000 2000 in Russia Battles of the Second Chechen War Battles involving Chechnya March 2000 events in Russia Ambushes