Special Purpose Islamic Regiment ( ; abbreviated SPIR ) , also known as the al-Jihad-Fi-Sabililah Special Islamic Regiment , was a Chechen organization loosely formed by Chechen warlord Arbi Barayev in 1996 . It was regarded as one of the main hostage-taking , kidnapping , and oil-smuggling groups operating in Chechnya during the lawless interwar period that followed the First Chechen War ( 1994 – 1996 ) with Russia . It is most notorious for its role in the October 2002 Moscow theater hostage crisis , when the group took some 800 hostages in the Russian capital ; by then , SPIR was headed by Movsar Barayev — the nephew of Arbi ( killed in 2001 ) — and probably never had more than 100 fighters at any given time . It might receive some external assistance from foreign fighters
Moscow theater hostage crisis
Moscow theater hostage crisis
Special Purpose Islamic Regiment