On 7 December 2002, Zakayev returned to the UK but the British authorities arrested him briefly at London Heathrow Airport; he was released on 50,000 GBP bail, which was paid by British actress Vanessa Redgrave, his friend who had travelled with him from Denmark.
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He was also the Foreign Minister of the Ichkerian government, appointed by Aslan Maskhadov shortly after his 1997 election, and again in 2006 by Abdul Halim Sadulayev.
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Akhmed Zakayev was born in the settlement of Kirovskiy, in the Kazakh SSR, Soviet Union, which is now in Almaty Province, in Kazakhstan; his family was deported by Stalin's regime along with the rest of the Chechens in 1944.
In October 2010, the Chechen government of Ramzan Kadyrov accused Gakayev of organising the August attack on Kadyrov's fortified home village of Tsentoroy while supposedly acting under orders from the exiled Chechen nationalist leader Akhmed Zakayev.
During the often-tense subsequent talks, the Russian negotiating team was headed by Ivan Rybkin, Lebed's replacement in the post of chief negotiator, and Boris Berezovsky and their Chechen counterparts Movladi Udugov and Akhmed Zakayev.