Shamil Basayev nominated him as the military amir (commander) of the Kabardino-Balkarian front of the Caucasian Front. In this position, along with Basayev and Ilyas Gorchkhanov, Astemirov was one of the masterminds behind the unsuccessful large-scale raid, in which more than 140 people, mostly alleged insurgents, died in the series of assaults against Russian government building and security forces across Nalchik on 13–14 October 2005. He also publicly promised assassinations of high-ranking officials, businessmen and clergy, and was seen as the key figure behind the January 2008 killing of Anatoly Kyarov, a police official in charge of a special unit that specifically targeted the Yarmuk Jamaat and Astemirov himself. Creation of the Caucasus Emirate In 2008, Astemirov took credit for the idea of the declaration of the Caucasus Emirate in 2007. Astemirov said that after the deaths of Sheikh Abdul-Halim and later Shamil Basayev, he sent a letter to the new Chechen rebel leader Dokka Umarov, asking him what he thought about declaring an Emirate that would replace the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. Umarov agreed and appointed Astemirov head of the Caucasian insurgency's Sharia Courts, while his predecessor, the Chechen Sheikh Mansur (Amir Mansur/Arbi Yovmurzayev) had been relieved from this position because he was opposed to the creation of an Emirate, and urged saving Ichkeria as a symbol of the Caucasian resistance. Death Astemirov's death was prematurely declared by the Russian authorities on several occasions. For example, in 2005, he was claimed to have been killed along with nine others, in big gun battle in the Nalchik suburb, and in 2009, security officials announced that Astemirov and three others were killed in a special police raid on an apartment building in the city (however, only two bodies were found there and it turned out that Astemirov was not in the targeted apartment). It was eventually confirmed, however, that Astemirov was killed during a shoot-out with police in Nalchik on 24 March 2010, after two suspicious men offered armed resistance when they had been stopped for a routine identity check: one of them managed to escape, but the other one was killed in an exchange of fire, after he had repeatedly shot and wounded by a police officer (also referred to as an FSB agent in some sources). The dead man was almost immediately identified as Astemirov after checking his fingerprints, and his followers also confirmed the death of their leader