Zakayev has been charged in Russia with terrorism, organizing gangs, abducting and torturing people (including personally chopping off their fingers with an axe), and killing 302 (including two priests).
He fled Russia in 2000 and received political asylum in Great Britain in late 2003. London has refused repeated Russian requests for his extradition, saying that the case was politically motivated and that he would be at risk of torture.
Representatives of the Prosecutor General's Office recently visited the U.K., where they held talks on the possibility of arresting Zakayev and handing him over to Russian authorities, according to Timur Lakhonin, head of Interpol's Russia branch.
Lakhonin said this month he is hopeful that Zakayev will be extradited by London before long, along with Russia's exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky, charged in Russia with embezzlement and sedition.
Russia's prosecutor general Yury Chaika earlier said he is convinced the U.K. will eventually extradite Zakayev and Berezovsky.
"The British side will sooner or later extradite Berezovsky and Zakayev," he told journalists.
The U.K. is also home to more than a dozen suspects wanted in Russia in connection with the long-running case around embattled oil company Yukos, including a former company vice president, Alexander Temerko, and former employees Natalia Chernyshova and Dmitry Maruyev, also charged with fraud.
The top Russian Interpol official also called for the extradition of exiled oligarchs Leonid Nevzlin, former co-owner of the bankrupt oil company Yukos, and Vladimir Gusinsky, a media baron and founder of Media Most and the NTV television channel.
Nevzlin and Gusinsky, who built their fortunes during post-Soviet Russia's mass privatization campaign in the 1990s and then fled the country to escape prosecution for alleged fraud, have in recent years been living in self-imposed exile in Israel.
