While we are preoccupied in Iraq, some sinister doings are happening in Russia. As I only partially understand it perhaps PAQ or someone more worldly can elaborate. But Putin the ex(?) KGBer has imported many exKGB types into his gov't. (the statists) The opposition is the old Yelsin crowd, supported somehow by the looters of Russian wealth the ogliarchs.
Many of them have fled or kowtowed to Putin, but one, Khodorkovsky (thank goodness for copy and paste) defied Putin and now has been arrested and their is a lot of fear in Russia about a return to a police state.
I have been reading Moscow Times to follow this stuff.

BTW Putin is the guy Bush said "I can do business with" . Well he does business with ashcroft

PLS

Putin is surrounded by both ex KGB and Russian Mafia, as well as the new business Czars.

A very dangerous situation.

Old scores are being settled: and the "Privatisation" of state assets has been a total scam from the beginning.

Worse, the mob and the businessmen have been shipping out hundreds of billions of $ over the past ten years.

Wherever you go in Europe, there are Russians owning business and real estate.

And mad Western (US and UK!!) banks are STILL lending 'em buckets of cash!

Paq

Certainly doesn't sound too good, and haven't heard about this yet (should probably find some time to watch more than just the local news, been too busy recently).


Out of curiousity... would anyone happen to know when the next elections in Russia are? Is there a chance someone "better" than Putin would be able to win? Unfortunately I do not follow current Russian politics, lol...

Oh yes, Moscow what a beautiful city it is.

Family and secret police torment tough-guy Putin

Russia's president may soon regret arresting its richest man

Martin Wollacott
Friday October 31, 2003
The Guardian

That Russia was moving in the rough direction of democracy was one of the optimistic assumptions of the 1990s.

One supporting proposition was that the social and political mess created by each stage of development in Russia would somehow be cleared up by the next leader. Thus the illusions of the Gorbachev era were to be dispelled by the more down-to-earth Yeltsin, and the chaos of the later Yeltsin years to be set in order by the more disciplined Putin, while Putin's rather different faults might in the future be put right by another leader yet to emerge.

The other was that the leaders themselves, both political and economic, could transcend their mainly murky origins as Soviet men turned grabbers of assets and power to become something like western democratic politicians, on the one hand, and western businessmen on the other. That these two groups now find themselves involved in a struggle over their respective roles in the Russian polity is one indication that neither have made the transition to which they supposedly aspire.

That they were in the process of doing so is certainly how they have presented themselves both internationally and domestically. Putin projects himself as a man of order, appealing to the Russian predilection for a tough and capable figure at the top, and as a man who understands the needs of a market economy, but also as a leader who reckons he has to earn his popularity with the people. Insofar as the market requires some institutions that the west calls democratic, and insofar as a popular leader needs votes, he seems to understand and accept a limited role for democracy, albeit of the managed variety.

Some of the oligarchs, the handful of men who may control as much as 70% of the Russian economy, have been engaged in making the workings of their corporations more visible and accountable, offering to pay more taxes, and in general suggesting a desire to make the transition to honest capitalism. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the head of the Yukos oil company, regards Rockefeller as his model. The arrest of this would-be Rockefeller, together with yesterday's freezing of shares in his company, represents the latest dramatic turn in what one commentator has called the conflict between Putin and today's equivalent of Peter the Great's boyars.

Unfortunately for Khodorkovsky, his ideas for this process of rehabilitation included not only funding opposition parties in the campaign for the Russian parliamentary elections in early December, but also saying that he might run as a candidate in the next presidential election but one. It has been speculated that Putin may want to keep open the option of pressing for a change in the law which would enable him to stand in that election. In any case, in expressing such an ambition Khodorkovsky broke the unwritten rule under which Putin is said to be ready to let the oligarchs enjoy their economic power: do not interfere in politics.

This is certainly one of the offences which has put Khodorkovsky in jail, but not necessarily the only one. His negotiations with Exxon Mobil and Chevron-Texaco for the sale of a large share of Yukos may well have angered certain supporters of Putin, whose economic interests might be threatened by such a deal. President Putin's own circle is notoriously divided between "the family", men who owe their position to Yeltsin and who have connections to the oligarchs, and the siloviki, or chekists, whose background is with the KGB or other security arms of the state.

Although there is such a division, it is not a clear-cut one. Putin himself has both family and chekist - as well as specifically St Petersburg - connections, which makes his decisions more difficult to read. The most likely explanation is that, in spite of his authoritarian impulses, Putin is often less in control, and more changeable, than he appears, and would like to appear, to be.

In any conflict between Putin and the oligarchs, he has overwhelming advantage, since the selective use of the law can at any time trip up men whose path to wealth has been littered with violations of many kinds. They in turn have the weapon of money, particularly as it can be focused on the Duma, and the weapon of business confidence. Russian share markets wobbled in panic after the arrest of Khodorkovsky, and have not yet recovered, while the reaction of western oil and other companies involved in Russia can be imagined. The Wall Street Journal lectured that Russia's economic revival is imperiled. Since a strong economy is undoubtedly high on Putin's list of objectives, he will be anxious about such reactions.

The broader problem Russia faces goes beyond personalities and the details of how power was acquired in the 1990s on each side of the political-economic divide. Putin seems to believe that it is possible to run a society in which wealth and economic power have no political dimension, except where particular businessmen and business groups are ready to be entirely subservient to the political leadership. In a country where big business is far from popular, it is a line which may go down quite well. Indeed, government can deflect on to big business some of the blame for the appalling poverty of some sections of the Russian people and the grave disparity of incomes. While the business winners are queing up for Bentleys in Moscow, the miners whose rescue Putin celebrated this week have reportedly not been paid for two months.

But Putin's commitment to a strong economy and his evident desire to maintain his considerable popularity point to a dilemma, as measures to reform the economy bear down harder on ordinary people. The more he establishes his ascendancy over business, the sharper that dilemma is likely to become. Small and middle-sized businesses of honest origins have been growing a little faster in Russia over the last couple of years. That may eventually help to bring about a more normal relationship between politics and business as a whole than the abnormal one which now clearly prevails.

Putin's likely course is to re-emphasise that Khodorkovsky's is a special case and not intended to be a shot across the bows of all the oligarchs. But whether that will be accepted, inside or outside Russia, is another question. After all, when the country's most powerful man has the country's richest man arrested, or at least endorses that arrest, it is difficult to present the result as an ordinary court case. If Khodorkovsky were to be acquitted, that would be a blow to Putin's authority, yet a guilty verdict followed by a lengthy term of imprisonment would be equally hard to carry off. Perhaps there is a way out of the confrontation, but the Russian president may come to regret the day Mikhail Khodorkovsky lost his freedom.

Must make BP happy, PLS.

They have just invested £3.7 billion in acquiring a Russian oil and gas giant!

Paq

http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2003/11/04/006.html
Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2003. Page 10

Putin the New Saddam?
By Eric Kraus

Emboldened by their historic propaganda success -- the creation ex nihilo of a justification for the U.S. invasion of Iraq completely unsanctioned by international law -- members of the dangerous Washington faction with deep links to the security services and the military-industrial complex, the dread Bushoviki, have identified a new "terrorist threat": President Vladimir Putin.

The means they are now deploying are strikingly similar: planted "intelligence," manipulation of public opinion by tame journalists and "nonprofit foundations," as well as the insidious repetition of evident lies on the assumption that at least something will stick.

In a recent op-ed piece in the increasingly reactionary Washington Post, Bruce Jackson, president of the innocuous sounding Project on Transitional Democracies, accuses Putin not just of re-establishing a tsarist state, but of the supreme crime of opposing U.S. political and economic interests in Russia's historic sphere of influence: the CIS. After long service in the weapons trade (Lockheed, Martin), Jackson is now a hatchet-man for the Bush administration. A member of the far-right Project of the New American Century, he serves with the likes of Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Donald Rumsfeld. Jackson was instrumental in rounding up support for the Iraq war with a stealth attack, corralling East European presidents into signing the notorious letter of the "Vilnius 10."

All is fair in love and (propaganda) war. In a crass insult to the world's Jews, Jackson deploys one of the most cynical foreign policy ploys of the Bushoviki: the callous exploitation of anti-Semitism, demeaning the sufferings of the Jewish people by reducing the term "anti-Semitism" to an epithet for any regime inimical to U.S. interests.

Jackson notes that three of the business magnates who came to a sticky end are Jewish, but neglects to mention that so were six of the original seven oligarchs, as well as 90 percent of those who currently qualify for the oligarch title. Given the ratios, the real surprise would have been if the fallen angels had been, say, Orthodox Hindus.

Nowhere, of course, does Jackson mention the dozens of Russian Jewish businessmen currently building their businesses, attracting foreign partners, and enjoying all the good things that Russia's resurrection has brought. It is ironic that of the spinmeisters warning of the anti-Semitic threat coming from Russia not one, to my knowledge, is a Jew.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky has managed to shake off a profoundly unenviable reputation in a very short time. In fairness, Yukos, acquired for some $300 million in the notorious loans-for-shares auctions and still largely controlled through a cascade of offshore vehicles, has proved to be an absolute star in recent years. But it is Khodorkovsky's generous funding of various U.S. neo-conservative causes, in part through his Open Russia foundation (one of the board members of which is Henry Kissinger, responsible inter alia for the Pinochet coup and the illegal, secret war that devastated Cambodia), that has given him with access to the most reactionary elements of the Bush administration -- Perle, Dick Cheney et al. -- all of whom are now lobbying furiously for the oligarch's interests.

What is less clear is why Khodorkovsky was naive enough to share their characteristic misconception that U.S. writ runs across the entire planet, and that support from Washington would solve his increasingly grave problems at home. Certainly, if his U.S. backers convinced him of this, they have done him a major disservice.

Yukos was the first Russian company to understand the profound changes brought about by the Putin government: with safety of ownership regardless of past misdeeds and a stable political and economic backdrop, far greater wealth could be built by increasing company valuations than by stripping assets. Emulation of their examples has fueled a historic boom in equity prices.

Most of Khodorkovsky's peers thought the concessions demanded in return (payment of taxes and an end to the meddling in politics) were a small price to pay. It is deeply unfortunate that Yukos increasingly sought to build its influence, not just in the oil fields and capital markets, but by buying control of the State Duma.

On Thursday, Putin met with the heads of the major investment banks, reassuring them about the future direction of reform. With arch-reformer German Gref smiling at his side, he was uncompromising in his message that he would attack corruption wherever it was found -- be it in the bureaucracy, private sector or Duma -- but that minority Yukos shareholders' interests would be zealously protected. He was forceful, lucid and remarkably well-briefed on market issues. Vitally, Putin reiterated that there was no question of a generalized attack upon the other oligarchs nor a revision of the results of privatization -- historically, those who have ignored his words have done so at their own cost.

The president also announced the dismantling of the Gazprom ring-fence "in a matter of months." The impact of this move may well outweigh the unarguably negative effects of the Yukos saga. Opening Gazprom to foreign investment would overnight almost double Russia's weighting in the main benchmark, the MSCI Index, mechanically driving a huge wave of buying by foreign funds.

Looking beyond the current turbulence, the vital issue affecting Russia's progress over the next four years is not the fate of one oligarch, but the upcoming Duma elections. Polls show a sharp rise in the popularity of Putin's party, which is set to win a sizeable majority in the next parliament. A clear victory would renew the bold reform drive which characterized the start of his presidency, before the Duma succumbed to oligarchic lobbying.

Russia has historically done best when it relied on its own internal strengths -- Jackson's coalition-of-the-available may huff and puff, but Putin's house is made of stone.

Eric Kraus is chief strategist for Sovlink Securities. His full views can be found at www.sovlink.ru

008.030
HOLY QURAN: Remember how the Unbelievers plotted against thee, to keep thee in bonds, or slay thee, or get thee out (of thy home). They plot and plan, and Allah too plans; but the best of planners is Allah.

(Anyone with any doubts with regard to the Russian government being as evil and as conniving against Islam as any other disbelieving government these articles should dispell them.)

RFE/RL Organized Crime and Terrorism Watch Reporting on Crime, Corruption, and Terrorism in the Former USSR, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East
18 December 2003, Volume 3, Number 42

NOTE TO READERS: This is the first part of a three-part article. Part 2 will appear in "RFE/RL Organized Crime and Terrorism Watch" on 8 January 2004.

THE OCTOBER 2002 MOSCOW HOSTAGE-TAKING INCIDENT (Part 1)
By John B. Dunlop

On 6 November 2002, a meeting was held in Moscow of the Public Committee to Investigate the Circumstances Behind the Explosions of the Apartment Buildings in Moscow and the Ryazan Exercises (all of which occurred in September 1999). The meeting took place at the Andrei Sakharov Center, and among those present were the committee's chairman, Duma Deputy Sergei Kovalev, its deputy chairman, Duma Deputy Sergei Yushenkov (assassinated on 17 April 2003), lawyer Boris Zolotukhin, writer Aleksandr Tkachenko, journalist Otto Latsis, and human rights activist Valerii Borshchev.

After the meeting had concluded, the members of the committee took a formal decision to "broaden its mandate" and to include the Moscow hostage-taking episode of 23-26 October 2002 -- and especially the actions of the Russian special services during that period -- as an additional subject of inquiry coming under the committee's purview.(1)

An Unusual Kind Of 'Joint Venture'?

The following is an attempt to make some sense out of the small torrent of information that exists concerning the October 2002 events at Dubrovka. In my opinion, the original plan for the terrorist action at and around Dubrovka bears a strong similarity to the campaign of terror bombings unleashed upon Moscow and other Russian urban centers (Buinaksk, Volgodonsk) in September of 1999. In both cases there is strong evidence of official involvement in, and manipulation of, key actions; so the question naturally arises as to whether Vladimir Putin in any way sanctioned them. Although there is additional evidence bearing on Putin's possible role, this paper will take an agnostic position on the issue, and will also not review it.

The October 2002 hostage-taking episode in a large theater containing close to 1,000 people was evidently, at least in its original conception, to have been preceded and accompanied by terror bombings claiming the lives of perhaps hundreds of Muscovites, a development that would have terrorized and enraged the populace of the entire country. However, in view of the suspicious connections and motivations of the perpetrators of this incident, as well as the contradictory nature of the actions of the authorities, it would seem appropriate to envisage this operation as representing a kind of "joint venture" (on, for example, the model of the August 1999 incursion into Daghestan) involving elements of the Russian special services and also radical Chechen leaders such as Shamil Basaev and Movladi Udugov.

Only a few individuals among the special services and the Chechen extremist leadership would likely have known of the existence of this implicit deal. Both "partners" had a strong motive to derail the movement occurring in Russia, and being backed by the West, to bring about a negotiated settlement to the Chechen conflict. Both also wanted to blacken the reputation of the leader of the Chechen separatist moderates, Aslan Maskhadov. In addition, the Chechen extremists clearly saw their action as a kind of ambitious fund-raiser aimed at attracting financial support from wealthy donors in the Gulf states and throughout the Muslim world (hence the signs displayed in Arabic, the non-traditional [for Chechens] garb of the female terrorists, and so on). The Russian authorities, for their part, had a propitious chance to depict the conflict in Chechnya as a war against an Al-Qaeda-type Chechen terrorism, a message that could be expected to play well abroad, and especially in the United States.

As in the case of the 1999 terror bombings, meticulous planning -- including the use of "cut-outs," false documents, and the secret transport of weapons and explosives to Moscow from the North Caucasus region -- underlay the preparation for this terrorist assault. In this instance, however, the perpetrators were to be seen as Chechens of a "Wahhabi" orientation whose modus operandi was to recall that of the notorious Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Once the operation had moved into its active stage, however, strange and still not fully explained developments began to occur. An explosion at a McDonald's restaurant in southwest Moscow on 19 October immediately riveted the attention of the Moscow Criminal Investigation (MUR) -- an elite unit of the regular police -- which then moved swiftly to halt the activity of the terrorists. The explosion at the McDonald's restaurant was, fortunately, a small one, and caused the death of only a single person. Two large bombs set to explode before the assault on Dubrovka was launched failed to detonate. Likewise a planned bombing incident at a large restaurant in Pushkin Square in the center of the capital failed to take place.

In my opinion, the most likely explanation for these "technical" failures lies in acts of intentional sabotage committed by some of the terrorists. What remains unclear at this juncture is why certain individuals among the terrorists chose to render the explosive devices incapable of functioning. One key point, however, seems clear: The Chechen extremist leaders felt no pressing need to blow up or shoot hundreds of Russian citizens. They were aware that such actions might so enrage the Russian populace that it would then have supported any military actions whatever, including a possible full-scale extermination of the Chechen people. So what Shamil Basaev, Aslambek Khaskhanov, and their comrades in arms seem to have done is, in a sense, to outplay the special services in a game of chess.

Most of the bombs, it turns out, were actually fakes, while the few women's terrorist belts that did actually contain explosives were of danger primarily to the women themselves. As Russian security affairs correspondent Pavel Felgenhauer has rightly suggested, the aim of the extremist leaders seems to have been to force the Russian special services to kill ethnic Russians on a large scale, and that is what happened.(2) Only an adroit cover-up by the Russian authorities prevented the full extent (conceivably more than 200 deaths) of the debacle from becoming known.

A central question to be resolved by future researchers is whether or not the Russian special forces planning an assault on the theater building at Dubrovka were aware that virtually all of the bombs located there -- including all of the powerful and deadly bombs -- were in fact incapable of detonating. If the special forces were aware of this, then there was clearly no need to employ a potentially lethal gas, which, it turned out, caused the deaths of a large number of the hostages. The special forces could have relatively easily and rapidly overwhelmed the lightly armed terrorists. Moreover, if they were in fact aware that the bombs were "dummies," then the special forces obviously had no need to kill all of the terrorists, especially those who were asleep from the effects of the gas. It would, one would think, have made more sense to take some of them alive.

Pressure Builds For A Negotiated Settlement With The Chechen Separatists

In the months preceding the terrorist act at the Dubrovka theater, which was putting on a popular musical, "Nord-Ost," the Kremlin leadership found itself coming under heavy political pressure both within Russia and in the West to enter into high-level negotiations with the moderate wing of the Chechen separatists headed by Aslan Maskhadov, who was elected Chechen president in 1997. Public-opinion polls in Russia showed that a continuation of the Chechen conflict was beginning to erode Putin's generally high approval ratings. With parliamentary elections scheduled for just over a year's time (in December 2003), this represented a worrisome problem for the Kremlin.

In a poll taken by the All-Russia Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM), whose findings were reported on 8 October, respondents were asked "how the situation in Chechnya has changed since V. Putin was elected president."(3) Thirty percent of respondents believed that the situation had "gotten better," but 43 percent opined that it had "not changed," while 21 percent thought that it had "gotten worse." These results were significantly lower than Putin's ratings in other categories. In similar fashion, a September 2002 Russia-wide poll taken by VTsIOM found 56 percent of respondents favoring peace negotiations as a way to end the Chechen conflict while only 34 percent supported the continuing of military actions.(4)

On 16-19 August 2002, key discussions had occurred in the Duchy of Liechtenstein involving two former speakers of the Russian parliament, Ivan Rybkin and Ruslan Khasbulatov, as well as two deputies of the Russian State Duma: journalist and leading "democrat" Yurii Shchekochikhin (died, possibly from the effects of poison, on 3 July 2003) and Aslambek Aslakhanov, a retired Interior Ministry general who had been elected to represent Chechnya in the Duma. Representing separatist leader Maskhadov at the talks was Chechen Deputy Prime Minister Akhmed Zakaev. The talks in Liechtenstein had been organized by the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (executive director, Glen Howard), one of whose leading figures was former U.S. national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. The meetings in Liechtenstein were intended to restore the momentum that had been created by earlier talks held at Sheremetevo-2 Airport outside of Moscow between Zakaev and Putin's plenipotentiary presidential representative in the Southern Federal District, retired military General Viktor Kazantsev, on 18 November 2001.(5) Efforts to resuscitate the talks had failed to achieve any success because of the strong opposition of the Russian side.

Following the stillborn initiative of November 2001, the Kremlin had apparently jettisoned the idea of holding any negotiations whatsoever with moderate separatists in favor of empowering its handpicked candidate for Chechen leader, former mufti Akhmad Kadyrov. This tactic, said to be backed by Aleksandr Voloshin, the then presidential chief of staff, soon became known as "Chechenization." Other elements among the top leadership of the presidential administration, such as two deputy chiefs of staff, Viktor Ivanov -- a former deputy director of the FSB -- and Igor Sechin, as well as certain leaders in the so-called power ministries, for example, Federal Security Service (FSB) Director Nikolai Patrushev, were reported to be adamantly opposed both to Chechenization and, even more so, to holding talks with moderate separatists; what they wanted was aggressively to pursue the war to a victorious conclusion.(6) If that effort took years more to achieve, then so be it.

In a path-breaking report on the meetings in Liechtenstein, a leading journalist who frequently publishes in the weekly "Moskovskie novosti," Sanobar Shermatova, wrote that the participants had discussed two peace plans: the so-called "Khasbulatov plan" and the so-called "Brzezinski plan."(7) Eventually, she went on, the participants decided to merge the two plans into a "Liechtenstein plan," which included elements of both. Khasbulatov's plan was based on the idea of granting to Chechnya "special status," with international guarantees being provided by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and by the Council of Europe. Under Khasbulatov's plan, Chechnya would be free to conduct its own internal and foreign policies, with the exception of those functions that it voluntarily delegated to the Russian Federation. The republic was to remain within Russian borders and was to preserve Russian citizenship and currency.

Under the "Brzezinski plan," Chechens would "acknowledge their respect for the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation," while Russia, for its part, would "acknowledge the right of the Chechens to political, though not national, self-determination." A referendum would be held under which "Chechens would be given the opportunity to approve the constitutional basis for extensive self-government" modeled on what the Republic of Tatarstan currently enjoys. Russian troops would remain stationed on Chechnya's southern borders. "International support," the plan stressed, "must be committed to a substantial program of economic reconstruction, with a direct international presence on the ground in order to promote the rebuilding and stabilization of Chechen society." The authors of this plan underlined that "Maskhadov's endorsement of such an approach would be essential because of the extensive support he enjoys within Chechen society."

On 17 October 2002 -- just six days before the terrorist incident at Dubrovka -- the website grani.ru, citing information that had previously appeared in the newspaper "Kommersant," reported that new meetings of the Liechtenstein group were scheduled to be held in two weeks' time.(8) Duma Deputy Aslakhanov and separatist Deputy Premier Zakaev were planning to meet one-on-one in Switzerland in order "seriously to discuss the conditions which could lead to negotiations." Former speakers Rybkin and Khasbulatov, the website added, would also be taking part in the negotiations. In mid-October, Aslakhanov emphasized in a public statement: "President Putin has not once expressed himself against negotiations with Maskhadov. To the contrary, in a conversation with me, he expressed doubt whether there was a real force behind Maskhadov. Would the people follow after him?" This question put by Putin to Aslakhanov, "Kommersant vlast" reporter Olga Allenova observed, "was perceived in the ranks of the separatists as a veiled agreement [by Putin] to negotiations."(9)

On 10 September 2002, former Russian Prime Minister Yevgenii Primakov had published an essay entitled "Six Points On Chechnya" on the pages of the official Russian government newspaper "Rossiiskaya Gazeta" in which he stressed the urgent need to conduct "negotiations with [separatist] field commanders or at least some of them."(10) "This struggle," Primakov insisted, "can be stopped only through negotiations. Consequently elections in Chechnya cannot be seen as an alternative to negotiations." Primakov also underlined his conviction that "the [Russian] military must not play the dominant role in the settlement." In an interview which appeared in the 4 October 2002 issue of "Nezavisimaya gazeta," Salambek Maigov, co-chairman of the Antiwar Committee of Chechnya, warmly praised Primakov's "Six Points," noting, "Putin and Maskhadov can find compromise decisions. But the problem is that there are groups in the Kremlin which hinder this process."

During September 2002, grani.ru reported that both Maigov and former Duma Speaker Ivan Rybkin were supporting a recent suggestion by Primakov that "the status of Finland in the [tsarist] Russian Empire can suit the Chechen Republic."(11) Another possibility, Rybkin pointed out, would be for Chechnya to be accorded "the status of a disputed territory, such as was held by the Aland Islands [of Finland], to which both Sweden and Finland had earlier made claims." A broad spectrum of Russian political leaders -- from "democrats" like Grigorii Yavlinskii, Boris Nemtsov, and Sergei Kovalev to Gennadii Zyuganov, leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation -- had, Rybkin said, expressed an interest in such models.

During the course of a lengthy interview -- whose English translation appeared on the separatist website chechenpress.com on 23 October (the day of the seizure of the hostages in Moscow) -- President Maskhadov warmly welcomed the intensive efforts being made to bring about a negotiated settlement to the Chechen conflict: "In Dr. Brzezinski's plan," Maskhadov commented, "we see the concern of influential forces in the United States.... We have a positive experience of collaboration with Ivan Petrovich Rybkin [the reference is to the year 1997, when Rybkin was secretary of the Russian Security Council].... If Yevgenii Primakov speaks of the possibility of a peace resolution, it is a good sign.... The Chechen party would willingly collaborate with the academician [Primakov]. And, finally, with respect to Ruslan Khasbulatov's plan,... we welcome the actions of Khasbulatov.... This plan can be the subject for negotiations."

It appears that Maskhadov was at this time also engaging in secret talks with a high-ranking representative of President Putin. "Into contact with the president of [the Chechen Republic of] Ichkeria, who was on the wanted list," journalist Sanobar Shermatova reported in February of 2003, "there entered such a high-ranking [Russian] official that he was threatened by no unpleasantness whatsoever by the law-enforcement organs for communicating with the Chechen leader."(12)

The FSB Suppresses A Promising Peacemaking Effort

It emerged at this time that Putin had also permitted his special representative for human rights in Chechnya, Abdul-Khakim Sultygov, an ethnic Chechen, to meet with Chechen deputies who had been elected to the separatist parliament in 1997. On 13 October, 10 days before the hostage-taking incident at Dubrovka, Sultygov met in Znamenskoe, the district center of Nadterechnyi District in northern Chechnya, with 14 such deputies. Observers from the OSCE's mission in Znamenskoe were said to have been involved in preparing the meeting. At the meeting, Sultygov and the Chechen deputies discussed ways of bringing about a political regulation of the crisis and also the need to observe human rights in Chechnya.

According to a website associated with the leading Russian human rights organization Memorial (http://www.hro.org), the FSB of Chechnya headed by General Sergei Babkin (an organization in strict subordination to the FSB of Russia) moved aggressively to quash this nascent peacemaking effort.(13) A mere 100 meters away from Sultygov's office in Znamenskoe, hro.org reported, the separatist parliamentarians were taken into custody by armed masked men, who then escorted them to the central FSB office in Nadterechnoe. Each separatist deputy was then interrogated by the FSB department head, Mairbek Khusuev, who subjected them, inter alia, to "insulting remarks." Sultygov, Memorial concluded, came to understand "the decisiveness of his [FSB] opponents who were not deterred by the presence of international observers [from the OSCE]. The breaking off of negotiations...is evidently profitable for the adherents of the force variant."

As this incident demonstrates, key elements among the "siloviki," or power ministries, were adamantly opposed to conducting peace negotiations with separatists and, moreover, to bringing an end to a war that was serving as a source of promotions in rank and of lucrative "financial flows." It seems likely that President Putin's intention was to project the appearance of a willingness to acquiesce to the peacemaking activities of Aslakhanov, Sultygov and others, as a largely symbolic sop to the Europeans. On 21 October, two days before the Dubrovka incident, the president's official spokesman, Sergei Yastrzhembskii, announced that there could be no negotiations on the conditions set by the rebels and that "only the official representative of Russia, Viktor Kazantsev, is to conduct negotiations with the separatists, while the remaining initiatives [such as those of Aslakhanov and Sultygov] are deemed to be personal ones."(14)

The involvement of the OSCE in the events in Znamenskoe was an indication that some Western European governments (as well as the United States) were becoming involved in the quest for a solution to a seemingly intractable conflict. At the time of the Dubrovka episode, Denmark was serving as host for a two-day conference on Chechnya attended by some 100 separatists, human rights activists, and parliamentarians. Maskhadov's spokesman, Zakaev, was one of the event's featured speakers.(15)

At this time, other pressures, too, were being brought to bear on the Kremlin to enter into peace negotiations. To cite one example, on 18 October, five days before the Dubrovka incident, a conference entitled "Chechen Dead End: Where To Seek The Peace?" was held at the centrally located Hotel Rossiya in Moscow.(16) The conference had been organized by the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia. Among those who addressed the congress were Duma faction leader Nemtsov, former Duma Speaker Rybkin, Maigov, and Akhmed-Khadzhi Shamaev, the (pro-Moscow) mufti of the Chechen Republic.

It should be underscored that there also existed a significant group of Chechens who complemented the influential and retrograde elements of the FSB and other power structures on the Russian side adamantly opposed to a peace settlement with Maskhadov. These elements consisted of extremist or "Wahhabi" elements among the separatists. The central figure of this group within Chechnya was, of course, the legendary field commander Shamil Basaev, and, abroad, said to be living in the Gulf states, Basaev's partners, the former Chechen First Deputy Premier and Minister of Information Movladi Udugov and former acting President Zelimkhan Yandarbiev. On 4 October, a website affiliated with this group, Kavkaz Center (http://www.kavkaz.org), lambasted the involvement of Ruslan Khasbulatov and Aslambek Aslakhanov in the peace process. Khasbulatov, the website remarked scathingly, "wants to be the Kremlin's only 'man' in Chechnya and to have a full mandate for talks with rebel president Aslan Maskhadov," while Aslakhanov, in the website's view, was serving as Khasbulatov's "power-wielding" assistant seeking to gain control of all the Russian forces in Chechnya.(17)

Setting The Stage

One of the key questions confronting any examination of the Dubrovka events remains how it was possible that such a collection of suspicious individuals could gather and furtive activities occur in and around Moscow over a period of months. Moreover, the provenance of some of the players -- coupled with reports that several of the participants among the hostage takers had already been in the custody of the Russian authorities -- only serves to sharpen this issue.

The Terrorist Action Takes Shape

The activities that culminated in the hostage seizure took place over a period of more than half a year. In February of 2002, eight months before the hostage-taking incident, two Chechen terrorists, "Zaurbek" (real name: Aslambek Khaskhanov) and "Abubakar," also known as "Yasir" (real name: Ruslan Elmurzaev), set the future terrorist act at Dubrovka in motion when they approached a third Chechen, Akhyad Mezhiev, in Ingushetia, where Mezhiev was wont to make regular visits to a cousin living in that republic.(18) Mezhiev had been born in the village of Makhkety, in the Vedeno District of Chechnya, but had managed to acquire legal residency in Moscow even before the first Chechen war.

"In terms of an ultimatum, they demanded that Mezhiev assist them, threatening otherwise to take revenge against his relatives living in Chechnya." Mezhiev was provided with a false internal passport, and his brother, Alikhan, was also drawn into the plot. Later Khaskhanov was to provide Alikhan with $2,500 with which to buy two vehicles intended to be used as car bombs. (These vehicles were said to have been purchased during the period August-September 2002.)

According to a June 2003 statement made by the then chief procurator of the city of Moscow, Mikhail Avdyukov, Aslambek Khaskhanov had been closely acquainted with terrorist leader Shamil Basaev. "Still in 2001, in the village of Starye Atagi," Avdyukov related, "he [Khaskhanov] received an assignment from Basaev, through a certain Edaev, to commit a series of terrorist acts in Moscow. Later when Edaev had been killed... Shamil Basaev himself directly confirmed the assignment to Khaskhanov. The terrorist acts were to consist of a series of 'actions of intimidation.'"(19) Avdyukov's statement continued: "He [Khaskhanov] was commanded to head a group and carry out in Moscow four large terrorist acts with the use of explosives in crowded places. In addition to himself, the group also consisted of Aslan Murdalov, the brothers Alikhan and Akhyad Mezhiev, Khampasha Sobraliev, and Arman Menkeev. All of them are now under arrest."

In April 2002, another member of the Chechen terrorist group, the already-mentioned Khampash Sobraliev, purchased a substantial property at House No. 100 on Nosovikhinskii Highway in the village of Chernoe, Balashikhinskii District, Moscow Oblast. The asking price for the property was said to have been $20,000. A family of Chechens then moved in: "Pavel [i.e., Khampash]...and two young women." The two women appear to have been Sobraliev's wife and sister. The family then erected a high fence around the property and began to receive visitors driving expensive foreign cars and large jeeps. Sobraliev's home soon became a hub of activity with the arrival of a former military-intelligence (GRU) operative. Arman Menkeev, a retired (December 1999) major in the GRU and a specialist, inter alia, in the making of explosives, moved in as a guest in the summerhouse on the property. (Khampash and the women were living in the main house.) The neighbors knew Menkeev as "Roma" and SobrAliyev as "Pasha."(20)

Menkeev's background and questions concerning his ultimate loyalties serve to highlight many of the problems connected with analyzing the Dubrovka events. According to an article posted in June of 2003 on the website agentura.ru, Arman Menkeev is "a Russian officer, a major, and a former deputy commander of a [GRU] special-forces detachment." Menkeev, who had been born in 1963 to a Kazakh father and Chechen mother, had previously served as a member of "the famous Chuchkovskaya Brigade of the GRU special forces." During the 18 years in which he was in the GRU, Menkeev had served abroad and was said to speak Farsi. He had also fought with the Russian military during the first Chechen war (1994-96), during which he had received a military decoration for valor, had been wounded, and had "received the classification of an invalid." Menkeev is also reported by agentura.ru to have prepared the "women martyrs' belts," the homemade grenades, and other explosive devices used by the Dubrovka hostage takers in October of 2002.(21) The weapons and explosives employed during October had been "transported to this house [in the village of Chernoe] straight from Chechnya in trucks containing boxes of apples."(22) (Other sources assert that they had been transported by vehicle from Ingushetia, not Chechnya.)

The article in agentura.ru directly raised the question of whether Menkeev was a traitor to Russia who was heeding the "voice of the blood" (of his Chechen mother) or whether he represented, instead, a loyal servant of Russia. The author noted that after Menkeev had been arrested in Chernoe by Russian police on 22 November 2002, FSB officers interrogating him at the Lefortovo Prison in Moscow had come to a decision to classify him as "loyal to the [Russian] government," adding mysteriously, "He knows how to keep a military and state secret."

By the summer of 2002, the terrorist conspiracy had begun to move into high gear. "For a certain time, the rebels tested [Akhyad] Mezhiev. Then, in the summer of 2002, they introduced him to his contact, Aslambek [Khaskhanov], and to the demolition specialist, Yasir,... who arrived specially in Ingushetia from Chechnya to become acquainted with him. Yasir was introduced to the neophyte under the pseudonym of Abubakar." (Both names, we now know, were pseudonyms used by Ruslan Elmurzaev, who was at that time a resident of Moscow and not of Chechnya.) In August 2002, both Khaskhanov and Elmurzaev paid a visit to Mezhiev in Moscow. Responding to adds that he had read in a newspaper, "Mezhiev then purchased two unremarkable vehicles and passed the keys to them -- as well as cell phones he had been instructed to purchase -- to Aslambek, who arrived specially from Nazran [Ingushetia]" to receive them.(23)

The activities of these Chechen terrorists in Moscow had not, it turned out, passed unnoticed. In fact, according to attorney Mikhail Trepashkin, not only were certain of these activities observed but the authorities were informed about them. However, the authorities then chose to take no action. Trepashkin, a former lieutenant colonel in the FSB turned dissident lawyer, was a controversial individual in his own right. In 1998, he had sued then FSB Director Nikolai Kovalev over his dismissal from the service and had participated in a November 1998 press conference together with another former FSB officer, Aleksandr Litvinenko, devoted to the subject of criminal activities occurring within the FSB. In 1999, Trepashkin had begun assisting the Sergei Kovalev commission in its investigation of the 1999 Moscow and Volgodonsk terror bombings.

According to Trepashkin's testimony, Elmurzaev ("Abubakar") and his associates operated in a gray zone where criminal activity routinely intersected with elements of Russian officialdom. In his "Statement" (Spravka), dated 23 March 2003, Trepashkin recalled: "Beginning in May of 2002, from people in the 'criminal world' there came information about a concentration of Chechens in the city of Moscow...such as had not been observed over the past two years."(24) From a retired secret-police officer who was working as a lawyer for several Chechen firms, Trepashkin learned that "Abdul" (a former field commander of Chechen terrorist leader Salman Raduev and of late separatist President Djokhar Dudaev) had appeared in the capital.

"I also," Trepashkin continued, "received information on 'Abubakar,' who, for an extensive period of time, had been living in the city of Moscow and had been earning a profit from firms based at the Hotel Salyut in the southwest of Moscow that no one was laying a hand on. Information had come even earlier that the Hotel Salyut was sending part of the funds to support the Chechen rebels. However, no one was carrying out any checking, since the shadowy funds were also being disseminated to several leaders of the [Russian] power structures. The Hotel Salyut was headed by two Chechens,... but their deputy was [retired] Lieutenant General of the USSR KGB Bogantsev. For this reason, no one [among the authorities] was laying a hand on 'Abubakar' in the hotel." Following the Dubrovka incident, Trepashkin voluntarily turned over the information he had collected concerning "Abubakar" to the FSB, but the FSB reacted to this gesture by "trying to fabricate a criminal case against me."

In a later statement, dated 20 July 2003, Trespashkin added: "At the end of July-August 2002,... I received information about a concentration in the city of Moscow of armed Chechen extremists.... They were especially concentrated in the Southwest and Central districts of the city of Moscow." Trepashkin recalled that he had earlier taken "Abdul" into custody in Chechnya in 1995 but that a senior secret police official, Nikolai Patrushev [now head of the FSB], and the then director of the FSK, Mikhail Barsukov, had "ordered me to leave him in peace.(25)

In a conversation with a retired FSB colonel, V.V. Shebalin, Trepashkin " pointed out to him that in Moscow they [Trepashkin's sources] had seen the field commander from the brigade of Raduev 'Abdul'.... I also acquainted him with materials relating to 'Abubakar,' who was serving as a 'roof' for a number of sites in the district of the metro 'Yugo-Zapadnaya.'" "Running ahead," Trepashkin added, "I will say that presently I am being accused of, at the end of July and the beginning of August 2002, providing Shebalin with information concerning agents of the FSB of the Russian Federation." Trepashkin's conclusion: "Either the concentration of extremists took place under the control of the Russian FSB and they therefore decided to turn my citing of such information into the revealing of a state secret of Russia, or Shebalin did not transmit the information to the Russian FSB." But Shebalin, it emerged, had indeed transmitted the information. According to the same July statement by Trepashkin: "He [Shebalin] said that the Russian FSB was aware of the information, but as to why they did not undertake any measures, and why, in relation to me, on the contrary, they opened a criminal case and seized the data base I had been collecting for years, including data about terrorists, he did not know."

Moreover, once Trepashkin learned that "Abubakar" was among the hostage takers at Dubrovka, "I again proposed to Shebalin to call up the materials on my computer which had been seized." But "the experts from the Russian FSB deemed the information I possessed about the events at the 'Nord-Ost' to be a state secret of Russia, and I was charged with having revealed a state secret."

On 22 October 2003, Trepashkin was arrested by the Interior Ministry on a highway in Moscow Oblast and charged with transporting a concealed and unregistered pistol in his car. Trepashkin was able to get out the information that the pistol (supposedly stolen in Chechnya) had been planted in his car and that the regular police had admitted to him that they had acted at the behest of the FSB. Duma Deputy Sergei Kovalev commented concerning this incident: "I do not believe that Mikhail Ivanovich [Trepashkin] had a pistol with him. He is an experienced man, a former officer of the KGB. He is not a bandit, and he is not a fool."(26) On the day preceding his arrest, it might be noted, Trepashkin had granted a major interview to a correspondent for "Moskovskie novosti."(27)

(John B. Dunlop is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.)

FOOTNOTES
(1) In grani.ru, 6 November 2002. The author would like to thank Robert Otto for his exceptionally generous bibliographical assistance and for his most useful comments on a draft of this essay. Peter Reddaway also made a number of remarkably incisive comments on the manuscript. Lawrence Uzzell, too, provided constructive and helpful criticism. The author is, of course, solely responsible for the final version of this essay.

(2) In sovsekretno.ru, November 2002.

(3) Posted on polit.ru, 8 October 2002, by VTsIOM polling specialist L. A. Sedov.

(4) Yurii Levada, "Reiting voiny," "Novoe vremya," 5 November 2002.

(5) See Yevgenia Borisova, "Kazantsev's Ball Now in Rebels' Court," "The Moscow Times," 20 November 2001. For an informative account by Shchekochikhin of a long conversation he had with Zakaev in Liechtenstein, see Yurii Shchekochikhin, "Zabytaya Chechnya," (Moscow: "Olimp," 2003), pp. 248-259. Zakaev describes, inter alia, details of the peace agreement he had largely come to with retired general Kazantsev.

(6) On this group, see "Chekisty vo vlasti," "Novaya gazeta," 14 July 2003.

(7) Sanobar Shermatova, "Chechen Plan Hammered Out," Institute for War and Peace Reporting, 30 August 2002. The "Khasbulatov plan" appeared as a prefix entitled "Plan mira dlya Chechenskoi respubliki" in Ruslan Khasbulatov, "Vzorvannaya zhizn" (Moscow: "Graal," 2002). The so-called "Brzezinski plan" appeared as: Zbigniew Brzezinski, Alexander Haig, and Max Kampelman, "The Way to Chechen Peace," "The Washington Post," 21 June 2002.

(8) In grani.ru, 17 October 2002.

(9) Olga Allenova, "Terrorizm i zakhvat posle antrakta," "Kommersant vlast," 28 October 2002.

(10) Yevgenii Primakov, "Shest punktov po Chechne," "Rossiiskaya gazeta," 10 September 2002.

(11) In grani.ru 17 September 2002.

(12) Sanobar Shermatova, "Mirotvortsy pod kovrom," "Moskovskie novosti," no. 6, 18 February 2003. Subsequently Shermatova reported that the high-level talks had been conducted "in one of the republics of the North Caucasus." ("Shestero iz baraevskikh," "Moskovskie novosti," 29 April 2003). Writing in "Po-amerikanski no poluchaetsya?" in the 5 August 2003 issue of "Moskovskie novosti," Shermatova added: "At the very time when Moscow was accusing Maskhadov of having organized the terrorist act at Dubrovka, he, according to our information, was located in a secure place in one of the republics of the North Caucaus."

(13) hro.org, 19 October 2002.

(14) Olga Allenova, "Terrorizm i zakhvat posle antrakta," "Kommersant vlast," 28 October 2002.

(15) In "The Moscow Times," 31 October 2002.

(16) In grani.ru, 18 October.

(17) Kavkaz-Tsentr, translated by BBC Monitoring, 4 October 2002.

(18) Aleksandr Khinshtein, "Glavnyi terrorist 'Nord-Osta,'" "Moskovskii komsomolets," 23 May 2003; and Zinaida Lobanova, "Tolko on otvetit za 'Nord-Ost'?" "Komsomol'skaya pravda," 22 April 2003.

(19) "V Moskve gotovilos chetyre 'Nord-Osta,'" "Rossiiskaya gazeta," 20 June 2003. Avdyukov was removed from his post in July 2003: "Prokuror Moskvy podal v otstavku," grani.ru, 31 July 2003.

(20) See Khinshtein, "Glavnyi terrorist..."; Andrei Skrobot, "Vzryvy v Moskve gotovyat v Podmoskove," "Nezavisimaya gazeta," 6 June 2003; and Zinaida Lobanova, Andrei Redkin, "Ne vinovny my! Baraev sam prishel," "Komsomolskaya pravda," 23 June 2003.

(21) Aleksandr Zheglov, "Pravitelstvu veren," agentura.ru, 30 June 2003. This article is said by agentura.ru to have first appeared in the newspaper "Den," 3 December 2003.

(22) Zinaida Lobanova et al., "Naiden ment, pustivshii terroristov v 'Nord-Ost,'" "Komsomolskaya pravda," 9 June 2003. An earlier report by Lobanova that appeared in the 22 April 2003 issue of the same newspaper had stated that the weapons and explosives had been transported to the capital from Ingushetia in a truck loaded with watermelons and had then been kept in two rented garages in Moscow, one on Leninskii Prospekt and one on Ogorodnyi Proezd. It appears that the explosives were originally housed at the base in the village of Chernoe.

(23) Zinaida Lobanova, "Tolko on otvetit za 'Nord-Ost'?" "Komsomolskaya pravda," 22 April 2003.

(24) For the text of Trepashkin's "Spravka," see "Tainstvennyi 'Abubakar,'" chechenpress.com, 31 July 2003.

(25) In "Ekho 'Nord-Osta' i vzryvov domov v Rossii," Kavkazkii vestnik (editor@kvestnik.org), 22 July 2003. The text also appeared in: "'Nord-Ost': provokatsiya FSB," chechenpress.com, 21 July 2003.

(26) In Polina Shershneva, "On poidet do kontsa," newizv.ru, 24 October 2003.

(27) Igor Korolkov, "Fotorobot na pervoi svezhesti," "Moskovskie novosti," 11 November 2003. In the 4 December 2003 issue of "Novaya gazeta," journalist Anna Politkovskaya reported that Trepashkin was being tried in a closed trial conducted by the Moscow District Military Court and that Amnesty International was in process of according him the status of political prisoner.

Compiled by Roman Kupchinsky. Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty

CyBerAliEn: On March 14, 2004, the Presidential elections were held and Putin won the re-election to the Presidency for his second and final term with 71% of the votes. Take care! angel

006.123
HOLY QURAN: Thus have We placed leaders in every town, its wicked men, to plot (and burrow) therein: but they only plot against their own souls, and they perceive it not.

RFE/RL Organized Crime and Terrorism Watch Reporting on Crime, Corruption, and Terrorism in the Former USSR, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East
8 January 2004, Volume 4, Number 1

THE OCTOBER 2002 MOSCOW HOSTAGE-TAKING INCIDENT (Part 2)

For Part 1 of this three-part article, see "RFE/RL Organized Crime and Terrorism Watch" of 18 December 2003.
By John B. Dunlop

The Nominal Leader Of The Terrorists

A young man who called himself Movsar Baraev served as the titular leader of the group of terrorists that took control of the Moscow theater. Movsar Baraev -- who also went by the names Mansur Salamov and Movsar Suleimenov(28) -- had but a single claim to fame: He was the nephew of the late Chechen Wahhabi kidnapper and murderer Arbi Baraev. According to a report appearing in the military newspaper "Krasnaya zvezda," Arbi Baraev "had personally participated in the murder of 170 persons."(29)

Nonetheless, Baraev, Movsar's uncle, "had moved freely about the [Chechen] republic showing at federal checkpoints the documents of an officer of the Russian MVD [Interior Ministry]."(30) "On the windshield of [Arbi] Baraev's vehicle," journalist Anna Politkovskaya has noted, "there was a pass, regularly renewed, which stated that the driver was free 'to go everywhere' -- the most cherished and respected pass in the Combined Group of [Russian] Forces."(31) Arbi Baraev also had reported shadowy ties to both the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Russian Military Intelligence (GRU).(32)

In January 2003, a well-known French journalist, Anne Nivat, author of the book "Chienne de Guerre: A Woman Reporter Behind the Lines of the War in Chechnya" (2001), who had conducted a number of incognito visits to Chechnya, reported: "Two months before the hostage taking, the GRU, the secret service of the Russian army, had announced [Movsar] Baraev's arrest. The implication is that he would have been held until his 'arrest' to lead the hostage taking at the Dubrovka theater."(33)

Good reasons exist to doubt that Movsar was the actual leader of the group. "Under his [Movsar Baraev's] control," Sanobar Shermatova has stipulated, "were [only] five to six rebels, and he never demonstrated either the military or organizational abilities necessary for a commander.... The Chechens [sources of "Moskovskie novosti"] say that Baraev himself was not fully initiated into the plan [to seize the theater]. He was supposed to play his role and then burn up like a rocket booster." The former pro-Moscow head of the Chechen Interior Ministry, also a former FSB officer, Said-Selim Peshkhoev "proposed that this group of terrorists was led not by Movsar Baraev but by another person."(34)

Further testimony that Movsar was not the real leader comes from Shamil Basaev. In late April 2003, Basaev recalled: "I included [Movsar] Baraev in this group only in late September [2002]. I had only two hours to talk to him and give instructions."(35) If Movsar Baraev was at this time in the custody of the GRU (as Nivat's sources claim), then Basaev could only have met with Baraev through the good offices of that elite organization.

Such a scenario is not unimaginable. It is known that Basaev himself worked closely with a purported GRU officer named Anton Surikov when Basaev was serving as deputy defense minister of the separatist (from Georgia) republic of Abkhazia in 1992-93. During the course of a 2001 interview, Surikov assessed "extremely positively" Basaev's role in that conflict.(36) "In the beginning of the 1990s," Surikov affirmed, "he [Basaev] was materially supported by us."

A number of Russian journalists and political analysts have expressed their belief that Basaev and Surikov met together once again some years later -- this time together with the chief of the Russian presidential administration, Aleksandr Voloshin, at the estate of a Saudi international arms dealer in southern France in July 1999, in order to seal an agreement which led to Basaev's invasion of Daghestan the following month.(37) In the summer of 2000, when the newspaper "Versiya" published an article about the alleged meeting complete with a group photograph of Voloshin, Basaev, and Surikov, the paper approached Surikov and he "rather severely" told its correspondents to leave him alone.

However, Surikov did not deny that the meeting took place. Moreover, almost a year later, when asked about the possible role of the security forces in organizing the invasion of Daghestan, Surikov replied somewhat mysteriously: "A positive answer to your question would sound unproven, although, in my view, such a perspective on events in part has a right to existence, but only in part." Among the more prominent individuals who have voiced this perspective was the former secretary of the Russian Security Council, retired General Aleksandr Lebed. He affirmed his belief in October of 1999 that "Basaev and the Kremlin had concluded an agreement," which had led to the August 1999 invasion of Daghestan.(38)

Among the suicide bombers who were present in the Moscow theater, Nivat has also reported, there were two women, who, like Movsar Baraev, had already been placed under arrest by the federal authorities: "At Assinovskaya, a village close to the border with Ingushetia, which is where two of the [Baraev] unit's women came from, their mothers say they had been arrested [by the Russian authorities] and taken to an unknown destination at the end of September [2002]. Secretive in the presence of the outsider that I am, and still considerably shocked, they won't say more."

In a similar vein, in January 2003, the late Duma Deputy and journalist Yurii Shchekochikhin wrote in the newspaper "Novaya Gazeta": "Unexpectedly, last week I learned that one of the female terrorists in the Nord-Ost building was not just anyone but a woman who had been imprisoned for a long time in one of the Russian [penal] colonies. She was recognized on television by her mother, a resident of Shelkovskii Raion in Chechnya. She cannot understand how her daughter reached Moscow as a terrorist from a prison cell."(39)

In addition, the well-connected investigative journalist Aleksandr Khinshtein has reported that some eight of the women suicide bombers were able to take up residence in a former "military city [gorodok]" in Moscow, located on Ilovaiskaya Street, not far from the Dubrovka theater. This complex, which housed a large number of illegal residents prepared to pay bribes to the authorities, was apparently under the protection of corrupt elements among the Moscow police.(40)

The Active Phase of the Operation Begins

By mid-October 2002, the terrorists had shifted over to the active phase of their operation. During a face-to-face meeting with "Abubakar," Aslambek Khaskhanov learned that "Shamil Basaev had ordered him [Abubakar] to prepare 'a very large action' with a seizure of hostages."(41) The action referred to was, of course, the taking of the theater at Dubrovka.

A series of powerful explosions had been set to go off, beginning on 19 October 2002, with the hostage-taking episode itself having originally been planned for 7 November, the former anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution. Several vehicles were fitted with explosive devices, most likely at the terrorist base at Chernoe in Moscow Oblast, and then moved to a garage at 95 Leninskii Prospekt. "An explosion [at a McDonald's restaurant in southwest Moscow] took place on 19 October, at approximately 1:05 p.m., that is not during rush hour and not in the most crowded area of the city."

This account by the former chief procurator of Moscow, Mikhail Avdyukov, continues: "Two other vehicles [fitted with explosives] were also parked: one next to the Tchaikovsky Theater Hall on Triumfalnaya Square, the other near a busy subway transit point in the center. But the more powerful explosives [contained in these two vehicles] did not work."(42) According to one version, the watch mechanism failed to work in the vehicle that had been parked at the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall.

On 20 October, Aslambek Khaskhanov, who had placed the explosives in the three vehicles, flew from Moscow to Nazran, Ingushetia, using false documents. His decision to leave town has been assessed by one journalist as being due to "banal cowardice." On that same day, his confederate, "Abubakar," according to one report, removed the large bomb from the vehicle at the Tchaikovsky Theater." On 23 October, that bomb was then "placed in the house of culture at Dubrovka."(43)

This powerful bomb placed in the theater, it was later revealed, was in fact incapable of detonating: "The power [ministries] have admitted," "Kommersant" reported in July 2003, "that the most powerful of the homemade bombs which were placed by the Baraevites in the seized theater center at Dubrovka were not in a condition in which they could be detonated. They lacked such important elements as batteries, which made the bombs harmless bolvanki [dummies]. And it was precisely this circumstance that permitted the conducting of a completely successful storm of the theater center."(44)

According to one press report, the powerful bombs placed by Khaskhanov did not go off because of a key design failure. Two of the vehicles that had failed to explode were later located by the Moscow Criminal Investigations Department (MUR) (in January 2003 in a parking lot located off the Zvenigorod Highway), who determined the reason for the failure of the bombs: "The gas tanks of the vehicles were divided hermetically into two parts: in one half was gasoline while the other was filled with a substance similar to plastic explosive together with nails and fragments of steel barbed wire. However, an examination showed that the amount of plastic explosive was so small that even if an explosion had happened, the explosive force would have been insignificant."(45) (As we have seen, other reports mention a faulty timing mechanism in the bombs.)

The explosion of the small bomb contained in the "Tavriya" vehicle that had been parked next to McDonald's restaurant on Porkryshkin Street and had resulted in the death of one person attracted the attention of a unit of MUR, an elite police body designed to combat organized crime and terrorism, commanded by Colonel Yevgenii Taratorin. "The police learned that the 'Tavriya' vehicle that had been blown up had been sold by proxy to a certain Artur Kashinskii...whose real name turned out to be Aslan Murdalov, a native of Urus-Martan in Chechnya, who had been living in Moscow for 10 years."(46) Working quickly, the MUR identified Murdalov and took him into custody on 22 October.

It was the arrest of Murdalov that forced the terrorists "to accelerate their activities and the seizure of the hostages at Dubrovka, which had first been planned for 7 November."(47) As journalist Zinaida Lobanova has noted: "The original seizure of the musical 'Nord-Ost' was planned for 7 November, the day of Accord and Reconciliation [the postcommunist name for the holiday], and that seizure was to have been preceded by the explosion of cars in the center of the capital, in order to sow panic."(48) On 22 October, "A.S. Mezhiev informed Abubakar about the taking into custody of A.M. Murdalov.... [Abubakar] told him that in the next few days a powerful operation would take place."(49)

The failure of the two car bombs to explode in crowded locations in the center of the capital required the terrorists to speed up and to alter their plans. The hostage-taking operation at Dubrovka had been intended (at least, apparently, by certain of its planners) to be the culmination of a terror bombing campaign directly reminiscent of the one visited on the capital in September of 1999. Deprived of this sanguinary "introduction," the October 23 hostage-taking action commenced shorn of its spectacular first act. The MUR had gotten on the trail of the terrorists and their associates sooner than had been expected.

(In this sense, the entire episode bears a certain resemblance to the "Ryazan incident" of September 1999, in which the local police interfered with an operation that was under way.[50]). Once the theater had been taken over by the terrorists on 23 October, the officers of the MUR realized that "the terror act at McDonald's and the seizure of the Nord-Ost had been prepared by one and the same people." On 28 October, just two days after the theater had been stormed by Russian special forces units, the MUR took the two Mezhiev brothers into custody.(51)

To return to 23 October -- the day on which the Moscow theater was seized by the terrorists -- shortly before the raid occurred: "Abubakar designated a meeting with [Akhyad] Mezhiev near the Crystal Casino. Abubakar was at the wheel of a Ford Transit [minibus]. He handed over to Mezhiev two Chechen girls on whom suicide belts with explosives had been attached. Abubakar ordered that the girls be taken to a populated place where they could blow themselves up and thus draw the attention of the law-enforcement organs away from the seizure of the House of Culture [at Dubrovka]."(52) "At first," the account continues, "Mezhiev decided to let the suicide women off at the Pyramid Cafe, but, having learned by radio of the seizure of the House of Culture, he exhibited cowardice."

A bomb blast at this normally crowded cafe located in the very center of Moscow would have been a catastrophic event. In his taped confession to the police, Akhyad Mezhiev related that, on the night of 23-24 October, Abubakar called him on his mobile phone and demanded angrily: "Why has there been no wedding?" Wedding was "the code word for the designated stage of the terrorist act. Women-bombs was what they had in mind." "Abubakar wanted me," Mezhiev continued, "to send the girls that same night. They had everything ready. Everything depended on me." Mezhiev drove the suicide bombers to the Pyramid Cafe on Pushkin Square. "Here there were always a lot of people. The 'brides of Allah' were to blow themselves up in the crowd." Mezhiev, however, "did not let the women out of the vehicle. Why? We don't know."(53)

Mezhiev then relates (on the police videotape) how he took the belts away from the would-be suicide bombers and then drove them to a train station where he bought them tickets to Nazran, Ingushetia, and bade them farewell. He then gave the "martyrs' belts" to his brother Alikhan, who, at the command of Abubakar, handed them over to Khampash Sobraliev, one of the two terrorists based in the village of Chernoe in Moscow Oblast.(54) "In a telephone conversation with Abubakar, he [Mezhiev] said that he was afraid and wanted to leave town." This he proved unable to do, and on 28 October he was placed under arrest by the MUR. "He was 'caught out' because of his telephone conversations with Abubakar."(55)

An alternative explanation to the version Mezhiev recounted to the police would be that the women terrorists in fact had been let out of the vehicle but their "martyr-belts" had failed to detonate. Shamil Basaev seemed to allude to such a development in his already-cited statement posted on Kavkaz Tsentr on 26 April 2003: "The detonators of our martyrs had not worked: this occurred with those who were inside [the theater at Dubrovka] and four female martyrs who were outside. They returned here. I personally talked to three and they claimed that their detonators had not worked."(56) It is entirely possible, however, that Basaev was aware that the belts would not work and was merely embellishing his tale for the sake of potential donors in the Gulf states and the Muslim world.

"According to the information of the FSB," the newspaper "Kommersant" reported on 29 October, "the entire building [at Dubrovka] was mined, and the explosion of only a part of the bombs could have brought about the collapse of the theater building. But only a pair of the bombs that were contained in the belts of women-kamikaze exploded. At the moment of the explosion, they [the women] were outside the hall guarding the approach to it. It turns out that all the other bombs were either fakes or they had not been readied for use. For example, they lacked batteries or a detonator."(57)

One of the Russian emergency workers who entered the building after it was stormed by the special forces, Yurii Pugachev, has recalled: "Personally I saw the bodies of several women in black clothing whose stomachs had literally been blown apart. Evidently the explosive was not very strong."(58) "If one is to believe the sources of 'Moskovskie novosti,'" Sanobar Shermatova and Aleksandr Teit wrote in an article appearing in April 2003, "several of the women suicide fighters, having understood that gas had been let into the hall, tried to connect the lead wires on their suicide belts. They didn't work, because, instead of explosives, there was a fake there. Was that really the way it really was?"(59)

Shamil Basaev has claimed that the original targets of the terrorists were the buildings of the Russian State Duma and the Federation Council. In an article appearing in an underground rebel newspaper, "Ichkeriya," Basaev even "provides the measurements of the vestibules of the two buildings."(60) Since, however, Basaev is a habitual distorter of the truth, one must at this point must remain agnostic about what precise building(s) the terrorists intended to target first.

The Russian authorities, it has also been reported, had been forewarned of the impending terrorist attack by none other than the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). According to Duma Deputy Yurii Shchekochikhin, he was telephoned on 25 October 2002 by "a high-ranking individual in Washington," who told him that, during the first half of October, the CIA had alerted the Russian government that "a new Budennovsk [a reference to the southern Russian town attacked in June of 1995 by a force headed by Shamil Basaev] was being prepared in Moscow."(61)

In April 2003, there occurred a brief flap whe