Chechnya's rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov said yesterday that warlord Shamil Basayev would be put on trial for masterminding the hostage siege in Beslan which killed more than 330 people, once fighting has stopped in the breakaway republic.
"I responsibly announce that after the end of the war, individuals guilty of conducting illegal acts, including Shamil Basayev, will be passed to a court of law," said Aslan Maskhadov in a statement on a rebel Web site -- www.chechenpress.com -- reacting to Basayev's claim to have masterminded the raid in Beslan.
Maskhadov appeared to be suggesting he would punish Basayev under Islamic Shariah law which he introduced when he was president of a de facto independent Chechnya for more than two years in the late 1990s.
"I announce that the leadership of the Chechen Republic and the armed forces under my control ... had nothing to do with this terrorist act," Maskhadov's statement said.
"But I have to point out that such acts [as Beslan] are a consequence and response to the genocidal war waged by the Russian leadership against the Chechen people, in which the Russian army has killed 250,000 people, including 42,000 children," he said.
Despite Maskhadov's statement denying any link with the Beslan attack, Russian officials have put a US$10 million bounty on both him and Basayev and continued yesterday to assert the two had been hand-in-glove in the bloody operation.
"The organization of this criminal act against little children, teenagers and their parents in Beslan was organized by Maskhadov and Basayev in close cooperation," said army spokesman Ilya Shabalkin in a statement.
Basayev, Russia's most wanted man, admitted early this month to staging the Beslan operation and a string of other attacks including the blowing up of two passenger planes that killed 90 people. He warned Moscow his forces would strike again.
Maskhadov has condemned Basayev before and broke with him in October 2002 when the warlord organized the seizure of a Moscow theater in a raid in which 129 hostages were killed.
But the two men had seemed to be uniting their efforts this year. Maskhadov's strong condemnation yesterday could weaken the rebel forces who are now more active than they have been for years.
Meanwhile, unidentified gunmen fired grenade launchers and automatic weapons yesterday at a Russian hospital treating children injured in the Beslan seige.
No one was harmed in the night-time attack directed at the intensive care unit of the hospital in the city of Rostov-on-Don, news agencies reported.
Police said the intended target may have been a local businessman housed in the unit rather than children from Beslan being treated in a separate burns ward.
Taiwan is projected to lose a working-age population of about 6.67 million people in two waves of retirement in the coming years, as the nation confronts accelerating demographic decline and a shortage of younger workers to take their place, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan experienced its largest baby boom between 1958 and 1966, when the population grew by 3.78 million, followed by a second surge of 2.89 million between 1976 and 1982, ministry data showed. In 2023, the first of those baby boom generations — those born in the late 1950s and early 1960s — began to enter retirement, triggering
One of two tropical depressions that formed off Taiwan yesterday morning could turn into a moderate typhoon by the weekend, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Tropical Depression No. 21 formed at 8am about 1,850km off the southeast coast, CWA forecaster Lee Meng-hsuan (李孟軒) said. The weather system is expected to move northwest as it builds momentum, possibly intensifying this weekend into a typhoon, which would be called Mitag, Lee said. The radius of the storm is expected to reach almost 200km, she said. It is forecast to approach the southeast of Taiwan on Monday next week and pass through the Bashi Channel
NO CHANGE: The TRA makes clear that the US does not consider the status of Taiwan to have been determined by WWII-era documents, a former AIT deputy director said The American Institute in Taiwan’s (AIT) comments that World War-II era documents do not determine Taiwan’s political status accurately conveyed the US’ stance, the US Department of State said. An AIT spokesperson on Saturday said that a Chinese official mischaracterized World War II-era documents as stating that Taiwan was ceded to the China. The remarks from the US’ de facto embassy in Taiwan drew criticism from the Ma Ying-jeou Foundation, whose director said the comments put Taiwan in danger. The Chinese-language United Daily News yesterday reported that a US State Department spokesperson confirmed the AIT’s position. They added that the US would continue to
The number of Chinese spouses applying for dependent residency as well as long-term residency in Taiwan has decreased, the Mainland Affairs Council said yesterday, adding that the reduction of Chinese spouses staying or living in Taiwan is only one facet reflecting the general decrease in the number of people willing to get married in Taiwan. The number of Chinese spouses applying for dependent residency last year was 7,123, down by 2,931, or 29.15 percent, from the previous year. The same census showed that the number of Chinese spouses applying for long-term residency and receiving approval last year stood at 2,973, down 1,520,
RSS