Radical Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev purportedly took responsibility yesterday for a recent series of terrorist attacks in Russia but put ultimate blame for a school massacre on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In a letter posted yesterday on the Kavkaz-Center Web site, Basayev purportedly said he had sent a letter to Putin proposing "independence [for Chechnya] in exchange for security." It was impossible to confirm whether the text -- signed by Basayev's nom de guerre, "Abdallakh Shamil, Emir of the Riyadus Salikhin Martyrs' Brigade" -- on the Web site was genuine. But the site is considered a mouthpiece for Basayev and his previous claims of responsibility have appeared there.
Basayev purportedly said that if Russia withdrew its troops and recognized Chechen independence, Chechnya would neither support nor finance groups fighting Russia, and "we can guarantee that all of Russia's Muslims would refrain from armed methods of struggle against the Russian Federation, at least for 10-15 years, on condition that freedom of religion [as is guaranteed in the Russian Federation] be respected."
The letter said Chechnya would join the Commonwealth of Independent States, a loose federation of former Soviet republics.
He purportedly said his brigade was responsible for an explosion last month at a bus stop outside Moscow, the near-simultaneous bombings of two planes the same night, a suicide bombing outside a Moscow subway station a week later, and the school hostage-taking in Beslan that ended in a hail of gunfire and explosions.
More than 430 people were killed in the attacks, with some 338 of those deaths coming during the hostage crisis in the Beslan school.
"A terrible tragedy occurred in the city of Beslan; the Kremlin vampire destroyed and wounded 1,000 children and adults, giving the ordering to storm the school for the sake of imperial ambitions and the preservation of his own throne," Basayev purportedly wrote.
Putin and other officials said repeatedly that in order to avert a bloodbath, they had not planned to storm the school, where the attackers had rigged bombs surrounding the approximately 1,200 hostages. According to Russian officials and witnesses, after explosions rocked the school, and armed volunteers started shooting, the special forces opened fire, too.
But Basayev disputed that.
"We declare that the Russian special services stormed the school, [and that] it was planned from the very beginning," he wrote, according to the Web site.
He purportedly said the attackers' demands had been clear: an immediate stop to the war in Chechnya and a start to the withdrawal of Russian troops, or Putin's resignation if he "does not want peace." If the president would decree an end to fighting, the return of troops to their barracks and a troop withdrawal, Basayev said, the attackers promised they would give the hostages water. And if the troops were really being withdrawn, they would have given them food.
"As soon as the troops are withdrawn from the mountains, we will let children up to age 10 go; the rest after the full troop withdrawal," he said of the attackers' conditions.
If Putin had resigned, the attackers would have freed all the children and left for Chechnya with the remainder of the hostages, the letter said.
He said he sent his message to Putin through former Ingush President Ruslan Aushev -- a respected regional figure who successfully negotiated freedom for 26 of the hostages -- and North Ossetian President Alexander Dzasokhov.
Putin has firmly ruled out any negotiations with Chechen rebels, insisting that the war-battered region is returning to normalcy under the Kremlin's twin programs of vesting increasing authority in elected Chechen officials and law enforcement services and reconstruction.
The Federal Security Service's spokesman in Chechnya, Major-General Ilya Shabalkin, said authorities had known "long ago" that Basayev was responsible for the series of attacks.
KINGPIN: Marset allegedly laundered the proceeds of his drug enterprise by purchasing and sponsoring professional soccer teams and even put himself in the starting lineups Notorious Latin American narco trafficker Sebastian Marset, who eluded police for years, was handed over to US authorities after his arrest on Friday in Bolivia. Marset, a Uruguayan national who was on the US most-wanted list, was passed to agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration at Santa Cruz airport in Bolivia, then put on a US airplane, Bolivian state television showed. “The arrest and deportation were carried out pursuant to a court order issued by the US justice system,” Bolivian Minister of Government Marco Antonio Oviedo told reporters. The alleged kingpin was arrested in an upscale neighborhood of Santa
FAKE NEWS? ‘When the government demands the press become a state mouthpiece under the threat of punishment, something has gone very wrong,’ a civic group said The top US broadcast regulator on Saturday threatened media outlets over negative coverage of the Middle East war, after US President Donald Trump slammed critical headlines from the “Fake News Media.” The US president since his first term has derided mainstream media as “fake news” and has sued major outlets over what he sees as unfair coverage. Brendan Carr, head of the US Federal Communications Commission — which oversees the nation’s radio, television and Internet media — said broadcasters risked losing their licenses over news coverage. “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will
SCANDAL: Other images discovered earlier show Andrew bent over a female and lying across the laps of a number of women, while Mandelson is pictured in his underpants A photograph of former British prince Andrew and veteran politician Peter Mandelson sitting in bathrobes alongside late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was unearthed on Friday in previously published documents. The image is believed to be the first known photograph of the two men with Epstein. They are currently engulfed in scandal in the UK over their ties to their mutual friend. The undated photograph, first reported by ITV News, shows King Charles III’s disgraced brother and former British ambassador to the US sitting barefoot outside on a wooden deck. They appear to have mugs with a US flag on them
INFLUTENTIAL THEORIST: Habermas was particularly critical of the ‘limited interest’ shown by German politicians in ‘shaping a politically effective Europe Jurgen Habermas, whose work on communication, rationality and sociology made him one of the world’s most influential philosophers and a key intellectual figure in his native Germany, has died. He was 96. Habermas’ publisher, Suhrkamp, said he died on Saturday in Starnberg, near Munich. Habermas frequently weighed in on political matters over several decades. His extensive writing crossed the boundaries of academic and philosophical disciplines, providing a vision of modern society and social interaction. His best-known works included the two-volume Theory of Communicative Action. Habermas, who was 15 at the time of Nazi Germany’s defeat, later recalled the dawn of
RSS