President Vladimir Putin awarded medals to members of the former KGB on Thursday for what the Kremlin said was their role in the killing of terrorist leader Shamil Basayev this month.
The ceremony, held behind closed doors, took place even as questions swirled about Basayev's death, which has become the latest of Russia's public mysteries.
Virtually no one has disputed that Basayev, 41, a Chechen separatist who planned the worst terrorist acts in modern Russia, is dead.
The separatists have confirmed his death and posted a video on the Internet memorializing him. Kommersant, a Russian newspaper, has published photographs of a grotesquely burned and mangled torso it contends is what remained of him after an explosion on July 10.
But the means and even the time of his death have become subjects of debate, fueled since the first hours by contradictory official statements, a climate of secrecy and opposing claims by the government, the separatists and Russian news media. According to the official government version, Russian special services officers killed Basayev in Ingushetia, a republic bordering Chechnya, by causing an explosion near him as he stood beside a truck and cars.
The separatists have disputed this, saying Basayev, who in addition to leading a terrorist group was vice president of the separatist government that Russia forced from power six years ago, died when a truck in his convoy hit a pothole, accidentally detonating explosives the separatists were moving.
They note that early on July 10, Russian officials reported that an accidental explosion had killed several terrorists, and then, in the evening, amended the report, saying the blast had been a special operation that had aimed at Basayev.
RSS