The Special Purpose Islamic Regiment, also known as the al-Jihad-Fi-Sabililah Special Islamic Regiment, was a Chechen organization loosely formed by Chechen warlord Arbi Barayev in 1996. It was regarded as one of the main hostage-taking, kidnapping, and oil-smuggling groups operating in Chechnya during the lawless interwar period that followed the First Chechen War (1994–1996) with Russia. It is most notorious for its role in the October 2002 Moscow theater hostage crisis, when the group took some 800 hostages in the Russian capital; by then, SPIR was headed by Movsar Barayev—the nephew of Arbi —and likely never had more than 100 fighters at any given time. UN Security Council sanction documents alleged ties and assistance from al-Qaeda, Taliban and Osama bin Laden.