Chechnya Weekly - Volume VI, Issue 33

September 7, 2005 – Volume VI, Issue 33

IN THIS ISSUE:
* Putin meets with a delegation from Beslan
* Several hundred Beslan residents want asylum abroad
* Chechen fighting claims more lives
* Violence ratches up in Ingushetia
* Dagestan violence shows no signs of easing
* Briefs
* Kremlin Seeks Support for Chechen Parliamentary Elections
By Andrei Smirnov




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PUTIN MEETS WITH A DELEGATION FROM BESLAN

The anniversary of the Beslan school hostage seizure was marked by, among other things, a meeting on September 2 between President Vladimir Putin and a delegation of eight Beslan residents—four members of the Belsan Mothers' Committee, three men who also lost children in the tragedy, and North Ossetian President Teimuraz Mamsurov, two of whose children were among the hostages and were wounded. In the meeting, the Russian president promised a thorough investigation into how the crisis was handled, but said that Russia could not protect its citizens against terrorism. The Moscow Times noted that while immediately after the meeting members of the delegation expressed satisfaction that they had finally met with the president, on September 4 they said they had thought he would later publicly apologize for the deaths of 331 hostages. That did not happen: the Kremlin website reported that during a Kremlin Security Council meeting on September 3, Putin simply announced that a group of investigators would be sent to Beslan from the Prosecutor General's Office to revitalize the investigation.

As the journalist and commentator Yulia Latynina noted in a column published in the Moscow Times on September 7, the meeting with Putin, which—much against the wishes of the victims' relatives—happened in the middle of the anniversary of the Beslan tragedy, was a "masterstroke of political PR." It provoked a discussion of the "pros and cons" of the meeting itself rather than "the issues that mattered on the first anniversary of the school seizure in Beslan"—that is, the details of the official mishandling of the crisis that have emerged from eyewitness testimony at the trial of Nur-Pashi Kulaev, the only living member of the terrorist team involved in the hostage seizure.

But while most media coverage of Putin's meeting with the Beslan residents carefully avoided such issues, details of the meeting reported by Natalya Galimova of Moskovsky komsomolets on September 5 revealed an astonishing level of either feigned or genuine ignorance on Putin's part about what really happened in Belsan over September 1-3, 2004.

Galimova interviewed one of the members of the Beslan delegation, Anneta Gadieva, who was a hostage along with two daughters, one of whom was killed. According to Gadieva's account, Putin said he had been told there were only 300-350 hostages in Beslan's School No. 1 and "right to the bitter end" had not known the precise number of hostages. Gadieva also quoted Putin as claiming that there is a witness who saw the terrorist who had his foot on the detonator pedal for the explosives that were hung up around the school building finish reading the Qur'an and took his foot off the pedal, thereby detonating the explosives. "But we replied that no such evidence had been heard in the court," Gadieva recounted. "We do not remember anyone at all saying such a thing. ‘That means that I have incorrect information. I shall check this information out,' the president promised." Kulaev claimed in his court testimony that the terrorist manning the detonator pedal was shot by a sniper, which triggered the explosions (see Chechnya Weekly, June 1).

Gadieva also said that when Putin was asked about eyewitness testimony (backed by leaks from official investigations) that security forces fired on the school from tanks while the hostages were still inside (see Chechnya Weekly, June 1 and August 3), he responded that the servicemen involved in the storming of the school had answered a questionnaire and that "all of them deny that such a thing happened." When another member of the Beslan delegation, Azamat Sabanov, told Putin that he himself had witnessed the tank fire, Putin responded: "We will investigate this."

Meanwhile, Novaya gazeta on September 1 published what it said were findings of the North Ossetian parliamentary commission investigating the Beslan tragedy, which is headed by the North Ossetian parliament's vice speaker, Stanislav Kesaev, side-by-side with those of the Russian parliamentary commission looking into the tragedy, which is headed by Aleksandr Torshin. According to the article's author, Elena Milashina, who reported the story from Vladikavkaz and Beslan, the North Ossetian commission has reached conclusions echoing testimony given by former hostages at the Kulaev trial and expert analysis, both of which contradict the official version of events and the conclusions reached by Torshin's commission. For example, according to Milashina, the North Ossetian commission has concluded that "[f]rom the testimony of hostages and witnesses one can conclude that the explosions in the gym were a surprise to the [hostage takers] themselves. There is also no small number of witnesses who say that the explosions in the gymnasium were provoked from the outside."

The North Ossetian commission, Milashina wrote, has also concluded that while the idea of bringing then Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov and his envoy Akhmed Zakaev to Beslan to negotiate with the hostage takers came up too late, "the possible appearance in Beslan of Maskhadov and Zakaev presented the Kremlin with a difficult choice: to allow the rescue of the hostages and thereby legalize the figure of Maskhadov and allow the possible political settlement of the Chechen problem." An "ad libbed storming" of the school made it possible to avoid that outcome. This echoes what Kesaev told Vremya novostei in an interview published in June, in which he suggested it was possible that the Russian authorities provoked a violent denouement to the hostage crisis in order to prevent Maskhadov from arriving on the scene to help resolve it. Kesaev told the newspaper that Maskhadov, through Zakaev, had "promised and guaranteed" then North Ossetian President Aleksandr Dzasokhov that he would come to Beslan by the evening of September 3 [2004]. "You have the impression that as soon as the likelihood of Maskhadov's appearance arose," Kesaev was asked, "the assault began?" He answered affirmatively, saying "I admit that [possibility]" (see Chechnya Weekly, June 30).

Still, following the publication of the Novaya gazeta article, Kesaev released a statement condemning it. "A publication putatively constituting a comparative analysis of the final reports of the North Ossetian and federal commissions arouses not simply bewilderment, but direct indignation," Kesaev said in the statement, newsru.com reported on September 3. "In the pursuit of sensations, the editors offered their readers an elementary provocation, inasmuch as the report of the North Ossetian commission does not yet exist. In addition, even in the available material, the commission does not name the names, events and facts mentioned in the newspaper. Circulating the fantasies of its author, the newspaper violates the law on mass media, not even mentioning the moral side of this whole story, which touches on the fate and feelings of the victims."

Even so, that Kesaev remains highly critical of the official handling of the Beslan tragedy was evident in an interview that gazeta.ru published on September 1. In the interview, he criticized the authorities for, among other things, insisting that the Beslan terrorists had not presented specific demands. "Of course they had specific demands, and these were made known by means of a note which was passed over and which constitutes material evidence," Kesaev told the website. "In it, calls were made for the troops to be withdrawn from Chechnya. I cannot quite understand why they spent a long time trying to convince us that there were no demands. This is not only disconcerting but it also enables us to judge that the people involved in the hostage rescue operation were thinking more about their own departmental interests than about the interests of the state as a whole or the individuals who had been taken hostage."

Kesaev told gazeta.ru that he doubted the accuracy of the official figure of 32 for the number of terrorists involved in the Beslan hostage taking. He also said it will not be possible to determine the source of the first explosion in the school because "the investigation was organized in such a way that there was no detailed inspection of the scene. On September 4 [2004], the school was not even simply cordoned off: There were pilgrims there, and sightseers, and friends and relatives of the dead," he said. "What is more, trash from the school's territory was gathered up by a bulldozer and transported to the dump. Therefore we have had no thorough inspection of the scene, as a result of which it would have been possible to carry out the necessary expert appraisals and try to establish the cause of the explosion."

Ultimately, Kasaev said, responsibility for the large number of hostages killed rests with the security agencies. "It goes without saying that the blame for such a number of people killed lies with those who carried out the operation," he told gazeta.ru. "Excuse me, but if someone ventures to determine the percentage of success or failure for the operation by claiming that if there were 1,000-plus hostages and only 331 were killed, then it can be regarded as successful, then I cannot understand such logic. The regime, including the security structures, is to blame, above all, for the fact that the school was seized, and this blame is naturally exacerbated by the way the operation was carried out. I say this while not denying the individual heroism of individual rescue workers. But it is incomprehensible, to put it mildly, not to assume responsibility for the fact that most of the hostages—more than 160 people—died beneath the roof which collapsed."

SEVERAL HUNDRED BESLAN RESIDENTS WANT ASYLUM ABROAD

Some members of the Beslan Mothers' Committee, along with several hundred other residents of the town, signed an appeal asking for asylum abroad. "We, the parents and relatives of victims who died in the September 3rd [2004] terrorist act in School No. 1 in the city of Beslan, have lost all hope of a fair investigation into the causes of that tragedy and the persons to blame for it, and we no longer wish to live in this country where human life means nothing," read the appeal, which was published by gazeta.ru on September 1. "We ask to be granted political asylum in any country where human rights are observed.

"For almost a year we have been waiting patiently to be told the truth about the brutal killing of our relatives and for the guilty persons to be called to account. However, time and the authorities' actions have shown us that we will never be told this truth, which is absurd and dreadful. Many of us were hostages in the school and witnessed the destruction of people. We have attended the court sessions [in the trial] of the terrorist N. Kulaev, where the state prosecutors are trying to dump all the blame onto the terrorists alone. Yes, a terrorist act did take place, for the gunmen shot 21 men in the school. They did not kill women and children. Who, then, shot the remaining 300-plus people, mainly women and children? People were killed as entire families. For what?! …[We know] who, for the sake of their ugly political image, scorned negotiations with the terrorists and, at the same time, the lives of our relatives.

"It is obvious that to Russia's federal regime we are ‘persons of Caucasian nationality.' They treated the hostages the way they treat livestock in a slaughterhouse. The majority of those who died were blown up, shot using tanks and grenade launchers, and burned alive by Shmel flamethrowers. Then the ruins of the building were carted off to the dump along with human body parts and the hostages' personal belongings."

The appeal's more than 500 signatories also condemned the war in Chechnya. "We believe that the primary cause of the outburst of terror in Russia is the unleashing of the cruel war against our own people in Chechnya," they wrote. "Corruption, graft, and bribe-taking have become a cancerous tumor on the body of the Russian state's power structures. This tumor has struck all of society, forming fertile soil for crime and terrorism.

"We, the mothers, fathers, relatives, and friends of hostages brutally tormented by terrorists, we who have been betrayed by our own politicians, officials, siloviki, and our ‘president,' who have been reduced to despair and lost all hope of hearing the truth about those who are chiefly to blame for the destruction of our relatives, we ask you to receive us into your country, where we will be law-abiding citizens respecting your laws."

It should be noted that both Susanna Dudieva, chairwoman of the Beslan Mothers' Committee, and Juliet Basieva, the group's executive director, dissociated themselves and the group from the asylum appeal. "An appeal to the heads of democratic states was presented to the Beslan Mothers' Committee, and the Committee took it under consideration," Basieva told Interfax on September 1. "Yet it was decided not to publish the appeal in the media…We think this is premature. The petition is coming from former hostages, not the Beslan Mothers' Committee. Several members of the Committee signed the appeal, but that is their personal point of view. This is being done to disrupt or thwart a meeting of the former hostages' delegation with the federal president. It is nothing but skillful black PR."

CHECHEN FIGHTING CLAIMS MORE LIVES

A Russian serviceman was killed and four were injured on September 5 when a landmine detonated under their Ural automobile in the Shali district, Radio Liberty's Russian service reported. An explosive wounded the commander of a reconnaissance unit in the Nozhai-Yurt district, RIA Novosti reported on September 5, quoting a Chechen law-enforcement source.

Radio Liberty's Russian service reported on September 4 that one Russia serviceman was killed and four others wounded in the Shali district when the car in which they were traveling hit a landmine. Meanwhile, two policemen were wounded during an operation in Kurchaloi district where three rebel fighters were captured. Two policemen were wounded when unknown assailants opened fire on them in the Kurchaloi district village of Tsentoroi. Meanwhile, Chechen Interior Minister Ruslan Alkhanov reported that two explosive devices had been discovered and defused in Grozny—a car-bomb in the courtyard of an apartment building in the Oktyabrsky district and a land-mine hidden in a trash can 500 meters from a middle school in the Leninsky district.

Kavkazky Uzel reported on September 3 that a large-scale battle between Chechen rebels and the Vostok battalion, the unit headed by Sulim Yamadaev that is part of the Main Intelligence Unit (GRU) of the armed forces' general staff, was taking place in southern Chechnya's mountainous Vedeno district. Citing a source in the Chechen military commandant's office, the website reported that two rebels had been killed and three Vostok members wounded in the fighting, which erupted on the outskirts of the village of Ersenoi when Vostok members on a reconnaissance mission came across a rebel unit made up of approximately twelve men. The Russian-Chechen Friendship Society, meanwhile, reported on September 3 that federal forces shelled woods near the village of Elistanzhi, also in the Vedeno district, following the shelling the previous evening of a wooded area between Elistanzhi and the village of Khattuni. The society's website quoted local residents as saying they believed that intense shelling was in response to stepped up rebel activity in the area. Indeed, Kavkaz Uzel reported on September 1 that a federal unit carrying out combat-engineering reconnaissance on the outskirts of Elistanzhi had been the target of a radio-controlled improvised explosive device, and that immediately after the explosion an escort vehicle had come under fire from unknown gunmen. No one was hurt in that incident. On August 31, unknown attackers fired from a grenade launcher at an outpost of the same unit. No one was hurt.

Meanwhile, fighting was taking place in other parts of Chechnya. A Chechen Interior Ministry source told Kavkazy Uzel that a bomb blew up a police vehicle in Grozny's Leninsky district on August 30, killing one officer and wounding three. Another federal serviceman was seriously wounded by a mine on the outskirts of the village of Uskhaloi in the Itum-Kale disrtrict.

Agence France-Presse on August 30 quoted on anonymous official from the pro-Moscow Chechen administration as saying that a bomb expert and two other servicemen had been killed over a 24-hour period. The source said that rebels had carried out six attacks on federal checkpoints and military bases during that period, killing a soldier and wounding three others. Another soldier was killed and three others injured when their jeep drove over a mine in Grozny's Oktyabrsky district. The Russian explosives expert was killed and another was hurt when a mine they were attempting to defuse blew up near the town of Kalinovskaya south of Grozny, the source said. Meanwhile, two police officers were wounded when their truck came under fire.

An anonymous pro-Moscow Chechen administration official told AFP on August 29 that six Russian soldiers had been killed and six wounded over the previous 24 hours. According to the source, Russian positions came under attack 17 times during that period, accounting for five of the dead and five of the wounded, while the sixth soldier killed died in a landmine explosion near the town of Shatoi and the sixth soldier wounded was injured while conducting a de-mining operation near the village of Komsomolskoye, south of Grozny. Meanwhile, three Chechen police officers were wounded during fighting with rebels in the town of Achkhoi-Martan. One rebel was killed and another captured in the fighting. Two other Chechen police officers were wounded when rebels attacked during a search operation in the Urus-Martan district village of Gekhi, AFP reported. Both Kavkazky Uzel and AFP reported that the Chechen government headquarters in Grozny came under heavy fire from grenade launchers and machine guns on August 29.

VIOLENCE RATCHETS UP IN INGUSHETIA

On September 6, two explosions took place in Ingushetia's Barsuki municipal district next to the Kavkaz federal highway and near the café "Tusholi," Interfax reported. An Ingushetian Interior Ministry source told the news agency that the first explosion took place around 7:30 AM local time, under a cellular telephone tower located on the grounds of a service station not far from the Kavkaz highway. The $200,000 tower, which belonged to the Mobikom Kavkaz company, was put out of commission. About four hours after the first blast, a second explosion took place as specialists from the cellular phone company and Ingushetian Interior Ministry officers were inspecting the scene and carrying out repairs. None of the phone company or police personnel were injured. Both explosive devices were stuffed with nails, bolts, and other metal objects. Kavazky Uzel noted that Barsuki, near where the blasts took place, is the native village of Ingushetian President Murat Zyazikov.

Ingushetiya.ru reported on September 2 that an attempt had been made on the life of the chief of the Ingushetian president's security service, Ruslanbek Dzyazikov, in Nazran. According to the website, a gunman fired at Dzyazikov, a relative of President Zyazikov, but missed, hitting instead the deputy chief of the republic's department for the protection of government facilities, Magomed Kartoev, who was hospitalized with non-life-threatening wounds. The press service of Ingushetia's Interior Ministry reported that a suspect in the attack, Magomed Esmurziev, had been arrested. The ministry described Esmurziev as "an active participant in illegal armed formations who was on the wanted list for participation in a rebel attack on Ingushetia."

Just a bit more than a week earlier, Ingushetian Prime Minister Ibragim Malsagov was wounded in an apparent assassination attempt. In that incident, which took place on August 25, two roadside bombs detonated near an outdoor market in Nazran just as Malsagov's motorcade passed. The Associated Press quoted Nikolai Ivashkevich, a spokesman for the southern regional branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry, as saying that Malsagov was wounded in the hand and leg and that Malsagov's driver was killed and two other people were injured. Acting Ingushetian Interior Minister Beslan Khamkhoev said that the two explosives had been placed about 10 to 15 meters apart and detonated by remote control within ten seconds of each other.

On August 15, Nazran police chief Dzhabrail Kostoev and his driver were seriously wounded when a roadside bomb detonated as his motorcade drove by Nazran's central city mosque (see Chechnya Weekly, August 18).

Meanwhile, Ingushetian opposition leader Musa Ozdoev predicted in an interview with ingushetiya.ru published on August 27 that the situation in the republic would worsen. Ozdoev, who is a deputy in the Ingushetian People's Assembly, said the situation would deteriorate mainly because of the "feeble rule" of Murat Zyazikov and his brother Rashid, who heads the Ingushetian governmental apparatus, and "the bribery and corruption that have infected all institutions of power and administration" in the republic.