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Lt. Gen Rail Rzayev

In 1993, Major-General Rail Rzayev was appointed commander of the Air Force. Later, the Air Force was merged with Air Defense Troops. Taking the rank of lieutenant-general, Rail Rzayev continued to work as commander of the Air Force and Air Defense Forces (Air Forces and Air Forces).

Baku was in a state of shock following the 11 February 2009 murder in broad daylight of the commander of the country's air force and air defense forces, Lt. Gen Rail Rzayev, who died from a single gunshot from a sniper who attacked when the General's car made a brief stop on the way to work. He held the rank of Deputy Minister of Defense. Rzayev's murder crossed a line in Azerbaijan, where politics and business can be rough but murders are exceedingly rare. Rzayev, who had served as air force commander since 1992, was a close personal ally of President Aliyev.

The circumstances of Rzayev's murder strongly suggest a professional operation and careful preparation. Rzayev's Ministry of Defense vehicle picked him up at about 0800 local 11 February. While the vehicle was stopped, a single assailant fired into the vehicle, hitting Rzayev in the back of the head. Rzayev died at the central military hospital shortly thereafter. Rzayev was buried within hours of his death, and that there was not time to perform an autopsy and it is not known whether the bullet was extracted. Rzayev's funeral was a hurried, unusual affair at which prominent figures were conspicuous by their absence. No government ministers were able to attend, and even Rzayev's friends failed to come. General Vahid Akhundov, for example, the security chief of the presidential apparat, was a close friend of Rzayev and from the same region as the deceased General and notably did not attend. The murder was exquisitely timed -- President Aliyev and the key ministers of defense and national security and the Procurator-General were all traveling at the time. Aliyev cut his visit to Kuwait short to return to Baku but the three ministers were not back in time to attend his hastily convened Cabinet meeting.

All of these factors suggest detailed planning and extensive preparation. Additionally, the murder took place in one of the most secure neighborhoods of Baku - near, in fact, to the building where the Minister of National Security lives. This suggests strongly that not only did the planners of this crime think of everything - distracting the adjutant, defeating or arranging the lifting of probable heavy surveillance of the street, burying the body immediately and advance knowledge (or orchestration) of the simultaneous absence of the key government leaders - they also had the manpower, influence and perhaps money to put all of these moving parts in play.

Baku was absolutely rife with speculation as to who might be responsible. Some commentators, such as the Zerkalo (Ayna) newspaper's well-respected Rauf Mirkadirov, suggested that Russia might be behind the murder, attempting to destabilize Azerbaijan. He suggested that the murder may be a way to focus Azerbaijan inwardly on a scandalous crime in order to distract the country from widely-believed allegations that Moscow has been transferring weapons to Armenia. While Russian special services could undoubtedly organize something like this, no specific evidence points to this and Russia's motive for going after Rzayev would be unclear.

A second possibility is that Rzayev met his end through a shady business deal gone bad. Some suggested that Rzayev's murder was the result of the wrong company being shut out of a major acquisition by the air force. Also, in 2004 Rzayev was dogged by rumors that he was using air force assets for private gain. These theories are also hard to substantiate due to their lack of specificity and because they fail to explain the strange coincidences described above. A final possibility, which seems on balance to be the most likely explanation, is that the crime was orchestrated from within the government at a very high level. Only someone with access to high-level officials and their schedules could have worked out the plan and timing for this attack. It also appears that at some level Ministry of National Security (MNS) surveillance was circumvented, co-opted or defeated. The orchestration of Rzayev's quick burial without an autopsy also would have to involve the subornation of several officials, all of which suggests a perpetrator from within the government.

Much speculation naturally centered on the Minister for Emergency Situations, Kemaladdin Heydarov, one of the few people in government whose reputation is questionable enough that he would widely be considered a suspect. Newspaper reports suggested that an incident in early December 2008 involving a helicopter carrying Heydarov motivated him to kill Rzayev. No concrete evidence supporting this allegation has emerged.

Two opposition newspapers have come up with their own version of events. The Baku-based Yeni Musavat and Bizim Yol papers reported in April that two people - Lt. Gen. Rzayev's aide-de-camp, Aydin Rafiyev, and Rafiyev's son, Anar Rafiyev - have been arrested in connection with the general's murder. The General Prosecutor's Office's Sultanov refused to confirm or to deny these reports. The chairman of the Committee against Torture, a non-governmental organization, confirmed this information to EurasiaNet, however. Elchin Behbutov, the organization's chairman, said that he had visited both the Rafiyevs in May 2009 in a pre-trial detention center run by the Ministry of National Security. According to Behbutov, the two men reject the charges against them, but are represented by attorneys and do not complain about their prison conditions.

One former deputy National Security minister believes that investigators may never find Rzayev's killer. "It is a contract murder, but the percentage of such cases that are solved is very low," said Sulhaddin Akper, now a member of Azerbaijan's opposition movement.

On 12 December 2009 Defense Minister Safar Abiyev said general Altay Aliyev had been appointed commander of Azerbaijani air forces and air defense. Notably, after Rail Rzayev, commander of the Azerbaijani air forces and air defense, was killed in January of this year, the post had been vacant. The investigation of his murder continued. Azerbaijan's Prosecutor General Zakir Garalov said in October 2010 that he was certain that the perpetrators and organizers of the murder of Lieutenant-General Rail Rzayev will be caught and brought to justice. Many Azerbaijanis consider the Defense Ministry to be one of the country's most corrupt institutions.

Minister of Emergency Situations Kamaladdin Heydarov controls a business empire in Azerbaijan ranging from fruit juice production to real estate development. The family owns more businesses than any other Azerbaijani family, including companies in food canning, construction materials, concrete, asphalt, chemicals, bricks, textiles, CD and DVD production (since licensed CDs or DVDs are generally unavailable on the local market, these are certainly all pirated), milk processing, tourism, gypsum materials, leather, agriculture, pianos, alcohol and spirits, juices, banking, insurance, and construction. Heydarov readily admitted to visiting U.S. delegations that he owns and operates the Caspian Fish Company which controls the lucrative (and previously Russian Mafia-controlled) Beluga Caviar production in Azerbaijan.

Rumors circulated in 2009 that Heydarov may have even been behind the assassination of Air Force Chief and Deputy Defense Minister General Rail Rzayev. The rumors pointed to the widely-reported forced landing of Heydarov's helicopter after it took off without obtaining flight clearance.