The statement came after Qatar’s interior ministry announced that two men had been charged with assassinating former Chechen president Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev.

A third Russian security agent was arrested and subsequently freed, according to sources in Moscow.

The three agents were arrested in Doha last week, Ivanov said, adding that “the arresters used weapons and brute force.” Moreover, “Qatar’s authorities not only seized Russian citizens by force, but also did not immediately inform the embassy of it, violating the most elementary norms of international law,” Ivanov said.

The minister flatly denied the accusations against the detained men. “The authorities’ attempt to charge them with Yandarbiyev’s murder is baseless. They are not in any way involved in this incident,” Ivanov said.

According to a foreign ministry statement, the three men “were in Qatar legally and worked on information and analysis within the framework of the international campaign against terrorism.”

Russia’s foreign intelligence service said earlier this month that it had nothing to do with the death of Yandarbiyev, who was killed when his car blew up on February 13.

Yandarbiyev, who Moscow had demanded be extradited from Qatar, briefly headed Russia’s separatist republic of Chechnya in the mid-1990s.

The 51 year old was killed and his 13-year-old son wounded when a bomb blast targeted their car as they returned from Friday prayers.