Russia said today it had paid millions of dollars for a tip-off that helped it find and kill Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov.
Maskhadov was killed a week ago in a triumph for Russian forces, but Russian rights activists said the government has not treated its defeated foe with respect and criticised the decision to bury Maskhadov in an unmarked grave.
The activists said the repeated display of the former Soviet army colonel's half-naked corpse on television risked further radicalising the resistance.
The Federal Security Service, successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said it had received a tip-off in response to a $10 million bounty on the leaders of the Chechen separatist movement.
"This helped us establish the precise location of the international terrorist and band leader of the Chechen republic Aslan Maskhadov and conduct a special operation," a spokesman said.
He said the bounty had been paid out but would not say who had provided the tip-off.
The rights activists said the decision to invoke Russia's anti-terrorism law and refuse to give Maskhadov's body to relatives for burial was a violation of human rights.