Imam Alimsultanov

Imampasha Vakharbiyevich Alimsultanov (; ) (June 22, 1957 – November 10, 1996) was a popular Chechen bard and folk singer.

Biography

Alimsultanov was born to Chechen parents in the Kirghiz SSR in 1957. His family, which belonged to the Zogoy teip, had been relocated as a result of the forced deportations of most Chechens and Ingush to Central Asia on February 23, 1944. His father, Vakharbi, was born in 1926 in the village of Bonay-Aul, located in the Aukhovsky District of central Dagestan, bordering Chechnya. Imam's mother, Aishat, loved him very much. After he was killed, her health started to deteriorate, but she recovered. She had 7 sons and one daughter named Iysita, who dutifully cared for her until she died in 2020 at the age of 92, having outlived her husband and five of her sons, including Imam. At least 26 members of the Alimsultanov family were victims of Soviet political repression, including deportation.

In 1958, as a one-year-old child, he returned to Chechnya. He completed secondary school in the Chechen capital Grozny. Alimsultanov later graduated from the Polytechnic Institute in Rostov-on-Don

Death On the night of November 10, (according to other sources, November 8 ) 1996, three men in police uniforms burst into the discreet Odesa house where Alimsultanov and his artistic team were settled by local Chechens in order to protect them. After the intruders made sure that they were in the right place, they shot Alimsultanov and two colleagues at point-blank range. All three died, but one witness, who was in the bathroom at the time of the murder, survived. The case remains unresolved. Аn investigation by Chechen special services implicated that Russia's FSB for the murder.

Memory Aslan Maskhadov, Shamil Basayev, Ruslan Gelayev, and many others attended Imam Alimsultanov's funeral. Maskhadov remarked that "Imam alone was worth ten Russian divisions." Alimsultanov was buried in the village of Novolakskoye near his hometown of Khasavyurt, Dagestan. On December 6, 1996, a street on the west side of the city of Khasavyurt was renamed in his honor. In Novolakskoye, a memorial plaque commemorating him was installed. His songs remain popular to this day amongst Chechens.