Terrorists Got Orders From Abroad; Did Not Speak ChechenRIA – Novosti September 6, 2004
Terrorists who seized a school in North Ossetia's Beslan, September 1, were receiving orders from abroad throughout the three suspense-laden days, says Aslanbek Aslakhanov, President Vladimir Putin's adviser for North Caucasian affairs.
"The men had their conversations not within Russia but with other countries. They were led on a leash. Our self-styled friends have been working for several decades, I deem, to dismember Russia. They are doing a huge, really titanic job. It's clear as daylight that those people are coming up as puppeteers and are financing terror," he said to the Rossia television company, national Channel Two, tonight.
Though the bandits named certain people they wanted to see as negotiators, and Mr. Aslakhanov was among them, he is sure the terrorist gang really did not mean whatever contacts.
Aslanbek Aslakhanov, a Chechen, was on the site throughout the tragedy, and contacted the gang on the telephone. "The men were certainly not Chechens. When I spoke Chechen with them, they said they couldn't make out a word. 'Speak Russian,' they told me. Well, I did as they wished, though I speak Russian with a Caucasian accent," he said in his TV interview.
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=2232Chechen rebel leader denies role in school hostage-takingMOSCOW : Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov denied any role in the bloody Beslan school hostage-taking through his spokesman after a suspected hostage-taker said Maskhadov had ordered the raid.
"Claims of Maskhadov's involvement in the terrorist act are part of a campaign of disinformation," the spokesman Akhmad Zakayev said in a statement faxed to AFP from London, where he was been granted political asylum.
"There can be no justification for terrorist acts against innocent citizens," the statement added in reference to the deaths of more than 330 adults and children hostages in `the three-day siege in southern Russia.
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/105436/1/.htmlRussia threatens to strike terrorists anywhere ALISON ROWAT, Foreign Editor
RUSSIA moved to retaliate for the Beslan school atrocity beyond its borders yesterday by threatening pre-emptive strikes against terrorists abroad, and demanding the extradition from Britain and the US of leading Chechen separatists.
The FSB security service placed a bounty of 300m roubles (£5.8m) on the heads of two rebel leaders. The president of North Ossetia, site of the massacre in which at least 326 people died, half of them children, promised to sack politicians. Alexander Dzasokhov told protesters the regional government would be gone in days.
Colonel General Yuri Baluevsky, chief of Russia's general staff, said the state had the right to strike terrorists wherever they were.
"We will take all measures to liquidate terrorist bases in any region of the world," he said.
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http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/23670.htmlThe Chechens' American friendsThe Washington neocons' commitment to the war on terror evaporates in Chechnya, whose cause they have made their own
John Laughland
Wednesday September 8, 2004
The Guardian
An enormous head of steam has built up behind the view that President Putin is somehow the main culprit in the grisly events in North Ossetia. Soundbites and headlines such as "Grief turns to anger", "Harsh words for government", and "Criticism mounting against Putin" have abounded, while TV and radio correspondents in Beslan have been pressed on air to say that the people there blame Moscow as much as the terrorists. There have been numerous editorials encouraging us to understand - to quote the Sunday Times - the "underlying causes" of Chechen terrorism (usually Russian authoritarianism), while the widespread use of the word "rebels" to describe people who shoot children shows a surprising indulgence in the face of extreme brutality.
On closer inspection, it turns out that this so-called "mounting criticism" is in fact being driven by a specific group in the Russian political spectrum - and by its American supporters. The leading Russian critics of Putin's handling of the Beslan crisis are the pro-US politicians Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Ryzhkov - men associated with the extreme neoliberal market reforms which so devastated the Russian economy under the west's beloved Boris Yeltsin - and the Carnegie Endowment's Moscow Centre. Funded by its New York head office, this influential thinktank - which operates in tandem with the military-political Rand Corporation, for instance in producing policy papers on Russia's role in helping the US restructure the "Greater Middle East" - has been quoted repeatedly in recent days blaming Putin for the Chechen atrocities. The centre has also been assiduous over recent months in arguing against Moscow's claims that there is a link between the Chechens and al-Qaida.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0%2C3604%2C1299318%2C00.html
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