Although his own son was killed by a Taliban roadside bomb five years ago, Rasul said the fighters earned their welcome in the village by treating people with respect.

"We were happy (after the Taliban arrived). The Taliban never bothered us," he said.

"This is an agony of the bandits," RIA Novosti news agency quoted him as saying. "They have no human face, no morals, nothing. They are not human."

Despite the end of large-scale fighting in Chechnya, the North Caucasus has been increasingly roiled by shootings and kidnappings linked to Islamist insurgents, criminal elements and ethnic feuds.

Last Wednesday, a prominent human rights defender, Natalya Estemirova, was kidnapped from her Grozny apartment and found dead in neighboring Ingushetia with gunshot wounds.

Her colleagues from the group Memorial claimed Kadyrov was behind the murder. He denied the allegations and sued Memorial.

Critics and rights groups accuse Kadyrov and his security forces of widespread abuses, torture and executions of people suspected of ties with militants.