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Radio Liberty
Three parts on 18 December 2003 and 8 and 15 January 2004

THE OCTOBER 2002 MOSCOW HOSTAGE-TAKING INCIDENT
By John B. Dunlop
John B. Dunlop is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
[DJ: Footnotes not reproduced here. Available on request.]

[Conclusion

Elements among both the Russian leadership and the power ministries and
among the Chechen extremists obtained their principal goals in the assault
on the theater at Dubrovka: namely, an end was put to the negotiation
process while Aslan Maskhadov's reputation was besmirched, and the
terrorists, for their part, had an opportunity to stage a grandiose
fund-raiser. The Russian authorities, moreover, were now able to
demonstrate to the entire world that Moscow, too, had been a victim of an
Al-Qaeda-style Chechen terrorist act. As in 1999, the chief victims of
these terrorist acts were the average citizens of Moscow. The bulk of the
evidence, as we have seen, points to significant collusion having occurred
on the part of the Chechen extremists and elements of the Russian
leadership in the carrying out of the Dubrovka events.]

Introduction

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 Sobraliev 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)

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 when a dissident former FSB
officer, Aleksandr Litvinenko, living in London, and a leading Russian
journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, reported that an FSB agent of Chechen
nationality, Khampash Terkibaev, had been present inside the theater
building but had left it before the storming of 26 October.(62)
Politkovskaya went on to publish the text of an interview with Terkibaev in
which he confirmed that he had indeed been in the building. It emerged,
however, that both Litvinenko and Politkovskaya had fallen into an
extremely intricate and clever trap, evidently laid by for them by the FSB.
Terkibaev, a murky adventurer with almost certain links to the secret
police, had boasted during a visit to Baku that he had been in the building
at Dubrovka, but he had evidently been lying. Sanobar Shermatova and a
co-author pointed out on the pages of "Moskovskie novosti" that Terkibaev,
"who in 2000 even found a way to receive a document of amnesty in the FSB
office in the city of Argun," had for a number of years been engaging in
anti-Wahhabi activities and would not therefore have been acceptable to the
Movsar Baraev/Abubakar group. "Terkibaev," they noted, "does not deny that
after the events around 'Nord-Ost,' he introduced himself in Baku as a
participant in the seizure of the hostages."(63)

Another Chechen, Zaurbek Talikhigov, was arrested by the police following
the storming of the theater building. He was apparently a walk-on volunteer
who, using a borrowed cell phone, attempted to inform the terrorists from
outside the building where the Russian forces were positioned. His phone
conversations were, of course, monitored and taped by Russian
law-enforcement authorities.(64)

The Terrorist Assault On 23 October

On 23 October, shortly after 9:00 p.m., 40 Chechen terrorists whose titular
leader was Movsar Baraev -- but whose de facto leader was the shadowy
"Abubakar" (Ruslan El'murzaev) -- stormed (there were no armed guards
present so the task was not overly difficult) and took control of the House
of Culture at Dubrovka in Moscow, which was putting on the popular musical
"Nord-Ost." A total of 979 people were taken captive (there were slightly
more than 900 present in the building at the time that it was taken back on
26 October).(65) According to a statement made by the former procurator of
Moscow, the terrorists were carrying 17 automatic weapons and 20 pistols,
as well as various homemade bombs, suicide belts, and grenades.(66)
Twenty-one of the terrorists were men and 19 women.(67) As opposed to the
"terror bombings" in Moscow in 1999 -- when the announced suspects had been
ethnic Karachai --on this occasion there could be little doubt that the
perpetrators were ethnic Chechens, though elements among the hostage
takers, with the likely support of the special services involved in the
operation, sought to convey the impression that there were Arab terrorists
among them.

One website, utro.ru, which on occasion elects to convey the views of the
Russian secret services, focused attention upon one of the terrorists, the
mysterious "Yasir" (another name, as we have seen, used by "Abubakar"): "As
'Utro' has learned from sources in the Russian special services," the
website wrote, "there were several rebels who were non-Chechens, including
an Arab called (his code-name) Yasir. About him the following is known:
this international terrorist is a subject of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia
and is on the international wanted list. Yasir entered into the leading
link of the cells of 'Al-Qaeda'.... The Wahhabi Movsar Baraev...was in fact
a marionette in the hands of experienced puppeteers."(68) When a deputy
minister of the interior, Vladimir Vasilev, was asked by RTR television on
26 October: "Abubakar is an Arabic name, isn't it?" he replied
misleadingly: "Naturally, it is."(69) Even one year after the Dubrovka
episode, some Russian security officials were continuing to push the
fictional "Yasir's" involvement in the hostage-taking events: "The
investigation," gzt.ru reported on 23 October 2003, "has not yet
established the identity of a mercenary, an Arab who called himself Yasir.
He was using a Russian Federation [internal] passport in the name of
Alkhazurov, Idris Makhmudovich, born 1974."(70) One day after the
publishing of this information, however, the newspaper "Izvestiya" reported
that it had been the titular leader of the terrorists, Movsar Baraev, who
in fact had been carrying "a passport in the name of Idris Alkhazurov."(71)

On 24 October 2002, the day following the seizure of the theater at
Dubrovka, it was reported by the media that President Vladimir Putin "sees
the seizure of the hostages in Moscow as one of the links in a chain of the
manifestations of international terrorism, in one row with the [recent]
terrorist acts in Indonesia and the Philippines. 'These same people also
planned the terrorist act in Moscow,' said Putin."(72)

These "Arab" and "radical Islamic" themes were also heavily accented by the
hostage takers themselves. At 10:00 p.m. on 23 October, just 50 minutes
after the taking of the building: "The [former] minister of propaganda of
the Ichkerian republic [i.e., Chechnya], Movladi Udugov, speaks to the BBC
Service of Central Asia and the Caucasus. He confirms that the group of
field commander [Movsar] Baraev organized the hostage taking. According to
Udugov, the group consists of kamikaze terrorists and about 40 [sic] widows
of Chechen rebels who are not going to surrender. The building is
mined."(73) Udugov was at the time widely believed to be living in Qatar or
another of the Gulf states. Two hours later, a website associated with
Udugov, Kavkaz-Tsentr (kavkaz.org), reported the same information, adding:
"The terrorists are demanding the withdrawal of [Russian] troops from
Chechnya."(74)

The following day, 24 October, it was reported by the website gazeta.ru, as
well as by other media, that: "The Qatar television company Al-Jazeera
broadcast a tape of the Chechen rebels in which they state that they are
prepared to die for the independence of their homeland and to deprive of
life the hostages located in the building in the theater center." "For us,"
the hostage takers affirmed on the tape, "it is a matter if indifference
where we die." "We have chosen to die here, in Moscow, and we will take
with us the souls of the unfaithful," added one of the five women in masks
standing in the frame under the sign, 'Allah akbar!' written in Arabic." In
another fragment, one of the rebels is shown declaring, "Each of us is
prepared for self-sacrifice, for the sake of Allah and the independence of
Chechnya."(75) The veiled women were shown dressed entirely in black.
Al-Jazeera television also showed one of the male rebels "seated in front
of a laptop with the holy Muslim book the Koran by his side." "We seek
death more than you seek life," said the man, who was also dressed in
black. "We came to the Russian capital to stop the war or die for the sake
of Allah," he asserted.(76) Al Jazeera reported subsequently that the
interview had been taped on 23 October in Moscow shortly before the
Chechens had assaulted the theater.(77)

The rebels also exhibited a militant radical Muslim stance over the course
of the few interviews that they granted to Russian and Western media. As
NTV correspondent Sergei Dedukh reported on 25 October (the footage was
shown the following day): "The two girls in black whom the rebels called
their sisters have explosives on their belts with wires sticking out of
them. Could you please tell us what your clothes and the explosives in your
belt mean?" An unidentified woman hostage taker replied: "They mean that we
shall not stop at anything or anywhere. We are on Allah's way. If we die
here, that won't be the end of it. There are many of us, and it will go
on."(78) Movsar Baraev is then quoted by Dedukh as asserting that "the
terrorists' only and final goal is the end of the military operation in
Chechnya and the withdrawal of [Russian] federal troops."

In an interview with journalist Mark Franchetti of London's "The Sunday
Times," Abubakar is quoted as saying: "We are a suicide group. Here we have
bombs and rockets and mines. Our women suicide bombers have their fingers
on the detonator at all times. Time is running out.... Let the Russians
just try to storm the building. That's all we are waiting for. We cherish
death more than you do life." When he was finally allowed to interview
Baraev, Franchetti witnessed this scene: "Baraev and his men paraded three
Chechen women dressed in black with headscarves covering all but their
eyes. In one hand each held a pistol, in the other a detonator linked to a
short wire attached to 5 kilograms of explosive strapped to her stomach.
Except for a beam of light from inside the auditorium, the foyer was dark.
One of Baraev's men used a torch to show off the explosives belts. 'They
work in shifts,' explained Baraev. 'Those on duty have their finger on the
detonator at all times. One push of the button and they will explode. The
auditorium is mined, all wired up with heavy explosives. Just let the
Russians try to break in and the whole place will explode.'"(79) (These
statements, as we have seen, were an apparent bluff by the terrorist
leaders -- the explosives were not in reality in a condition in which they
could be detonated.)

Putin and his team, manifestly, now had an 11 September 2001 of their own,
though it remains unclear whether or not they had been surprised by this
development. Signs in Arabic, the brandishing of the Koran, veiled women
suicide bombers dressed all in black -- what more could the Russian
leadership need? Moreover, as distinct from 1999, the terrorists on this
occasion were unquestionably Chechens, except, perhaps, for a sprinkling of
Arabs such as the fictional "Yasir." The seizing of the theater building,
it was heavy-handedly suggested, constituted a link in a chain leading back
to the infamous Al-Qaeda.

Blackening Maskhadov

In addition to seeking to depict the hostage-taking incident as a second
9/11, a second aim behind the regime's response to the crisis appeared to
be to fully discredit Aslan Maskhadov, and thus render the possibility of
negotiations with him or other moderate Chechen separatists unthinkable.
Early on the morning of 25 October, the website newsru.com (affiliated with
NTV) reported: "There has come information that the order to seize the
hostages was given by Aslan Maskhadov. One of the Chechen terrorists stated
this. A tape of [Maskhadov's] declaration was shown by the channel
Al-Jazeera. In it Maskhadov says, 'In the very near future, we will conduct
an operation which will overturn the history of the Chechen war.'"(80)

This statement by Maskhadov was cited later on the same day by official
spokesmen for both the FSB and the Interior Ministry as self-evident proof
of his responsibility for the raid. On 31 October, Putin spokesman Sergei
Yastrzhembskii emphasized at a news conference that there could be no
question of holding future talks with Maskhadov. "Maskhadov can no longer
be considered a legitimate representative of this resistance,"
Yastrzhembskii told reporters. "We have to wipe out the commanders of the
movement," including Maskhadov, he stressed.(81)

This aggressive campaign by the Russian leadership seems to have borne
significant diplomatic fruit. On 30 October, the "Los Angeles Times"
reported that "a senior U.S. official" in Moscow had termed Maskhadov
"damaged goods" with links to terrorism. The senior official went on to
assert that "the Chechen leader should be excluded from peace talks."(82)
In more judicious fashion, one influential Russian democrat and
parliamentary faction leader, Grigorii Yavlinskii, confided on 27 October
"his view of Maskhadov has changed. If Maskhadov commanded the rebels in
the theater, he said, he could never participate in a political
settlement."(83)

But how strong was the evidence linking Maskhadov to the terrorist action?
Journalist Mikhail Falkov looked into the issue of the tape of Maskhadov's
statement that had been shown over Al-Jazeera and learned that: "Russian
television viewers had been presented only with a fragment of the original
tape. On the tape it was distinctly evident that the filming had been
conducted not in October but toward the end of the summer." This discovery
appeared to back up the claim of Maskhadov's official spokesman in Europe,
Akhmed Zakaev, that "the question [in Maskhadov's taped statement]
concerned not the seizure of hostages but a military operation against
federal forces."(84) It should also be noted that, on 24 October, the day
following the hostage taking at Dubrovka, Zakaev had written to Lord Judd
of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and unambiguously
declared: "The Chechen leadership headed by President A. Maskhadov
decisively condemns all actions against the civilian population. We don't
accept the terrorist method for the solution of any kind of problems.... We
call on both sides, both the armed people in the theater and the government
of Russia, to find an un-bloody exit from this difficult situation."(85)

In an article appearing in "Moskovskie novosti," journalists Shermatova and
Teit reported that a careful analysis of a hushed conversation that had
been conducted in Chechen between Abubakar and Movsar Baraev and had been
accidentally captured by NTV on 25 October showed the following: "Here is
Movsar Baraev answering the questions of NTV correspondents before a
television camera. Next to him stands a rebel, known as Abubakar: he in an
undertone in Chechen corrects Movsar. When Baraev declares that they had
been sent by Shamil Basaev, Abubakar quietly suggests, 'Pacha ch'ogo al,'
'point to the president.' After that, Movsar obediently adds: 'Aslan
Maskhadov.'"(86) Abubakar thus sought publicly to tie Maskhadov directly to
the hostage-taking incident.

That Abubakar and not Movsar Baraev was the de facto leader of the
terrorists also becomes clear from Franchetti's report: "At one point he
[Baraev] lowered his guard. Perhaps succumbing to the lure of fame, he
offered to let me film the hostages in the auditorium. His right-hand man
[Abubakar] fiercely disagreed.... They briefly left the storage room to
confer in the dark foyer.... Baraev came back. There would be no more
filming."(87) Abubakar had prevailed over Baraev in a test of wills.

It seems that Abubakar may also in a subtle way have been involved in
helping the federal forces to prepare the storming of the theater. "Several
sources in the special services," the newspaper "Moskovskii komsomolets"
reported on 28 October, "have informed us that in the juice which the
negotiators took to the hostages, without their knowledge, there was
admixed a substance which was to soften the toxic action of the gas."(88)
Abubakar himself raised this topic. Summing up one of her
discussion/negotiations with Abubakar, journalist Politkovskaya has
recalled: "We agree that I will start bringing water into the building.
Bakar suddenly throws in, on his own initiative, 'And you can bring juice.'
I ask him if I can also bring food for the children being held inside, but
he refuses."(89)

A leading journalist writing on the pages of "Moskovskie novosti," Valerii
Vyzhutovich, looked into the issue of Maskhadov's supposed responsibility
for the raid and concluded: "There are no direct proofs convicting
Maskhadov of the preparation of the terrorist act in Moscow." He added that
"not a single court, not even ours, the most humane and just," would uphold
the admissibility in a trial of the edited and highly selective footage
shown over Al-Jazeera television -- "a propagandistic soporific" -- in
Vyzhutovich's words.(90)

When Politkovskaya, in a one-on-one private conversation with Abubakar,
directly asked him, "Do you submit to Maskhadov?" he replied, "Yes,
Maskhadov is our president, but we are making war by ourselves." "But you
are aware," she pressed him, "that Ilyas Akhmadov [a separatist spokesman
loyal to Maskhadov] is conducting peace negotiations in America and Akhmed
Zakaev in Europe, and that they are representatives of Maskhadov. Perhaps
you would like to be connected with them right now? Or let me dial them for
you." "What is this about?" Abubakar retorted angrily. "They don't suit us.
They are conducting those negotiations slowly...while we are dying in the
forests. We are sick of them."(91) Abubakar's feelings concerning Maskhadov
and other Chechen separatist moderates are revealed in these words.

The regime, for its part, seems to have concluded that it now possessed
ample, indeed overwhelming, evidence to prove to both Russian citizens and
to Western leaders two key points: first, that the hostage takers were
dangerous and repugnant international terrorists in the Al-Qaeda mold; and,
second, that the leader of the separatist Chechens, Aslan Maskhadov, had
been irretrievably discredited by the raid, rendering the possibility of
any future negotiations with him unthinkable.

Negotiations Leading Nowhere

The failure of three of the four bombs to detonate confronted both the
terrorists and the Russian authorities with an exceedingly slippery
situation. How was the crisis to be resolved? Abubakar reluctantly
consented to conducting a series of negotiations with various Duma
deputies, journalists, and at least one doctor, while the Russian power
ministries for their part set about practicing a raid on the theater
building. Duma deputies who, at great personal risk, visited the building
in order to negotiate with the terrorists were: Yabloko faction leader
Grigorii Yavlinskii; Aslambek Aslakhanov, the parliamentary deputy
representing Chechnya; Irina Khadamada; Iosif Kobzon; and Vyacheslav
Igrunov. (Another Duma faction leader, Boris Nemtsov of the Union of
Rightist Forces, negotiated with the terrorists by telephone.) Also
visiting the building were former Russian Prime Minister Yevgenii Primakov
and the former president of Ingushetia, Ruslan Aushev. A key role was, as
we have seen, played in the negotiations by journalist Anna Politkovskaya.
Doctor Leonid Roshal, who treated the hostages, and Sergei Govorukhin, the
son of a famous Russian filmmaker and himself a Chechen war veteran, also
attempted to facilitate the negotiations.(92)

Yavlinskii's experience with the negotiations has been summarized thus:
"The hostage takers were said to have asked specifically for Yavlinskii....
He said he met with the hostage takers for an hour and a half on the night
of 24 October. They said they wanted an end to the war in Chechnya and the
withdrawal of federal troops, but Yavlinskii said when he tried to get them
to formulate their demands, they were unable to come up with any kind of a
coherent negotiating position. 'Let's go step by step. You want a
cease-fire, OK, let's go for a cease-fire,' Yavlinskii said he told the
hostage takers. 'Tell me which regions to pull troops out of. Tell me
something I can use.'"(93)

"I insisted," Nemtsov confided to "Nezavisimaya gazeta," "that we had
maximally to move the negotiation process forward with a single goal -- to
free the children and women. And my logic -- about which both Patrushev and
Voloshin knew -- and I stated it also to Abubakar, the politruk [political
officer] of the terrorists responsible for the negotiations, was the
following: for each peaceful day in Chechnya they would release hostages.
One peaceful day -- the children; another one -- the women, and so on. The
rebels liked that idea. And the day before yesterday was indeed a peaceful
day. But when I reminded Abubakar about our agreements, he sent me to the
devil and said that one should talk with either Basaev or Maskhadov."(94)

"There are five requests," Politkovskaya has recalled, "on my list. Food
for the hostages, personal hygiene for the women, water and blankets.
Jumping ahead a little, we will only manage to agree on water and juice....
I begin to ask what they want, but, in political terms, Bakar isn't on firm
ground. He's 'just a soldier' and nothing more. He explains what it all
means to him, at length and precisely, and four points can be identified
from what he says. First, [President Vladimir] Putin should 'give the word'
and declare the end of the war. Secondly, in the course of a day, he should
demonstrate that his words aren't empty by, for example, taking the armed
forces out of one region.... Then I ask, 'Whom do you trust? Whose word on
the withdrawal of the armed forces would you believe?' It turns out that
it's (Council of Europe rapporteur) Lord Judd. And we return to their third
point. It's very simple -- if the first two points are met, the hostages
will be released. And as for the extremists themselves? 'We'll stay to
fight. We'll die in battle.'"(95)

While letting volunteer negotiators such as Politkovskaya buy some time,
the regime limited itself to delivering only a few public messages to the
terrorists. On 25 October, the director of the Federal Security Service
(FSB), Nikolai Patrushev, "declared that the terrorists would be guaranteed
their lives if the hostages...were released. He made this declaration after
meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin." Also on 25 October, at 8:30
in the evening, "the chair of the Federation Council, Sergei Mironov,
addressed the hostages and terrorists on direct open air on a radio program
of Ekho Moskvy. Addressing the terrorists, he [Mironov] declared: 'Advance
your real conditions, free our people, and you will be ensured safety and
security to leave the boundaries of Russia. You have de facto already
achieved your goal of attracting attention. The entire world is talking
about it.'"(96) Presented one day before the launching of the storm, these
statements appear to have been another attempt to buy time.

Late in the evening of that same day, 25 October, the regime offered to
begin serious negotiations on the following day (26 October), with retired
General Viktor Kazantsev, Putin's official representative in the Southern
Federal District, meeting with the hostage takers. This gesture came at a
time when preparations for the storm were moving ahead full tilt. The
rebels, for their part, reacted positively to this development, "announcing
to the hostages that they had 'good news.'... Tomorrow [Saturday, 26
October] at 10:00 a.m., Kazantsev will come. Everything will be normal.
They have come to an agreement. This suits us. Behave peacefully. We are
not beasts. We will not kill you if you sit quietly and peacefully.'"(97)
Political and security affairs correspondent Pavel Felgenhauer has reported
that Kazantsev made no preparations to actually fly from southern Russia to
Moscow.(98)

According to Duma faction leader Yavlinskii, he came to understand "by 5
p.m. on 25 October" that Putin had adopted an irrevocable decision to storm
the building.(99) The gazeta.ru website has reported that, "The first
information that a decision concerning a storm had been taken and that it
had been set for the morning of 26 October was gained by journalists
working in the area of the theater center at about 11:00 p.m. on 25
October."(100) Felgenhauer observed over Ekho Moskvy radio on 26 October:
"Our forces...stormed the 'Nord-Ost' building after two days of
preparations, without even so much as a prior attempt to negotiate with the
captors in any meaningful way to secure a peaceful solution to the
affair.... This week, first there was reconnaissance. By every conceivable
means of electronic and acoustic surveillance, the terrorists' exchanges
and movements were monitored. On Friday [25 October], the plans were
reported to Vladimir Putin, who gave the go-ahead for the operation to
start on Saturday."(101)

A member of the special forces units which took the building provided
support for Felgenhauer's interpretation in remarks made to gzt.ru: "We put
bugs everywhere, even in the concert hall. We accompanied every negotiator;
in the beginning we did it openly, but then the Chechens became
indignant.... When the journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, made the agreement
with them to deliver water, food, and medicine, headquarters had already
prepared everything.... Everybody knew about the storm. Only nobody knew
when it would happen."(102)

It was the special forces and not the terrorists who appear to have
precipitated the final denouement. "At 5:20 a.m. [on 26 October],"
journalist Valerii Yakov has written, "the operation suffered its first
setback. The terrorists noticed in the building a movement of a group of
'Alfa' [special forces] and opened fire. They were instantly destroyed, but
it was necessary immediately to correct the plan [of attack].... At this
time, a representative of the FSB, Pavel Kudryavtsev, came out to the
journalists and reported that the terrorists had shot two men and that
another man and a woman had been wounded. Later it emerged that this
information was false."(103) The above-cited correspondent Felgenhauer has,
for his part, commented: "There are no serious grounds for these heroic
fairy tales [about an execution of the hostages by the terrorists] to be
believed. Long before the building was stormed, it had become obvious in
many ways that everything would be decided precisely on Saturday
morning."(104) The producer of the Nord-Ost musical, Georgii Vasilev, who
was the de facto leader and chief spokesman for the hostages, declared: "I
have heard that they began the storm supposedly because they [the
terrorists] began to execute the hostages. That is the official point of
view of the authorities. I want to say that there were no executions --
only threats."(105)

As is well known, a decision was taken by the Russian authorities to employ
a powerful gas in the retaking of the building. As one military affairs
specialist, Viktor Baranets, has reported, "The idea of using gas during
the operation to liberate the hostages was in the heads of many members of
the operational headquarters already during the second day of the emergency
situation when it became clear that they would hardly come to agreement
with the terrorists.... It was decided to use the most powerful poison
[available] -- a psycho-chemical gas (PChG). According to some sources, it
has the name 'Kolokol [i.e., Bell]-1.'"(106) What was in this gas? "We are
never going to know exactly what chemical it was," Lev Fedorov, an
environmental activist who is the head of the Russian Union for Chemical
Safety, has aptly commented, "because in this country the state is more
important than the people."(107)

According to the website gazeta.ru, the special forces began pumping gas
into the hall through the ventilation system at 4:30 a.m., "a half an hour
before the storm."(108) Other sources contend, however, that it may have
been significantly earlier, perhaps shortly after 1:00 a.m.(109) One
possibility is that a decision was taken to strengthen the dosage of the
gas after the initial infusion did not seem to be having the desired
effect. The chief anesthesiologist of Moscow, Yevgenii Evdokimov, has
speculated: "The death of those people was possibly caused by an overdose
of the substance [in the gas]."(110) The website gzt.ru wrote on 28
October: "It has become known to 'Gazeta' that the first attempt to
neutralize the bandits located among the hostages did not succeed -- the
concentration of the poisonous substance turned out to be insufficient."(111)

According to an October 2003 statement by the press department of the
Moscow City Prosecutor's Office, 125 hostages died from the effects of the
gas, some of them following the storm while they were in hospital, while
five were killed by the terrorists.(112) The actual death toll from the
effects of the gas might, according to some estimates, have in fact
exceeded 200.(113) In addition, scores of other hostages were reported at
the time to be seriously ill from the effects of the gas.(114) In April
2003, a lawyer representing some of the former hostages asserted that
approximately 40 more of the hostages had died since 26 October 2002.(115)
In October 2003, the newspaper "Versiya," summing up the results of an
investigation conducted by its journalists, stipulated that "about 300" of
the former hostages were now dead.(116) The incompetence and the
disorganization of the medical and emergency teams called in to treat the
ill and the dying were unquestionably a cause of many of the deaths. The
medical teams, in their defense, had not been informed about what was in
the gas. When the Russian State Duma declined to carry out an inquiry into
the actions of the medical teams, the Union of Rightist Forces conducted
its own investigation and then published its scathing findings.(117)

At 8:00 a.m. on 26 October, one hour after the building had been declared
liberated, Russian state television (RTR) showed the following mendacious
tableau: "The gang leader [Movsar Baraev] met his death with a bottle of
brandy in his hand. According to special-purpose-unit men, they found an
enormous number of used syringes and empty alcohol bottles on the premises.
The criminals, who described themselves as champions of Islam and freedom
fighters, must have spent the last hours in the theater bar. Even the
women, officers say, smelt strongly of alcohol. Probably because of
that,... [the women terrorists] did not have time to set in motion the
explosive devices attached to their waists. According to specialists, each
device contains at least 800 grams of TNT. Besides, in order to increase
the impact, the devices were filled with ball bearings and nails. Another
explosive device was planted in the center of the hall, which, to all
appearances, was intended to make the ceiling collapse. And there is a
whole arsenal on the stage: assault rifles, TNT, cartridges. And the most
interesting are these homemade grenades. Despite their small size, they are
extremely powerful."(118) (By this time, if not earlier, the Russian
authorities must have become fully aware that the explosives placed in the
hall had been incapable of detonating.)

On 27 October, President Putin invited the special forces commandos from
the "Alfa" and "Vympel" units who had taken back the theater to a special
reception at the Kremlin. In his remarks, Putin praised the professionalism
of the two units of the FSB, and he then joined with them in a silent
standing toast.(119) In early January 2003, shortly after New Year's Eve,
"Putin signed a secret decree to award six people with Hero of Russia
stars, including three FSB officials and two soldiers from the special
units 'Alfa' and 'Vympel.' The fifth 'hero' is the chemist who gassed the
theater center."(120)

Following the storming of the theater building, the president's approval
ratings for his conduct of the war in Chechnya shot up in the polls: "If in
September, 34 percent of Russian citizens had been in favor of continuing
military actions, while 56 percent had favored peace negotiations, at the
end of October -- for the first time since the beginning of 2001 -- the
opinions divided almost half and half: 46 percent were for military
actions, while 45 percent were for negotiations."(121)

Questions

 From the testimony of former hostages interviewed by the Russian media, it
seems virtually certain that the terrorists did have ample time to destroy
many of the hostages before they themselves had been overcome by the gas or
shot by the attacking special forces. Why did they not do so? As we have
seen, most of the explosives in the building were "fakes" or very weak
bombs presenting a danger principally to the women terrorists wearing them.
Even without detonating the bombs, however, the terrorists carried real
automatic weapons and could easily have raked the hostages with
automatic-weapon fire. They clearly chose, however, to let the hostages
live. Even an Interior Ministry general who had been identified by the
terrorists and had been separated from the other hostages was not killed
(though his daughter died from the effects of the gas).(122) Theater
producer Vasilev has recalled: "When the shooting began, they [the
terrorists] told us to lean forward in the theater seats and cover our
heads behind the seats."(123)

How many of the terrorists were killed in the raid? In June 2003, Moscow
City Prosecutor Mikhail Avdyukov stipulated that a total of 40 terrorists
had been killed and that none had managed to escape.(124) The same figure
was given by Avdyukov's successors in October 2003.(125) At 9:44 a.m. on 26
October 2002, however -- that is, almost three hours after the building had
been declared liberated -- it was reported by Interfax that only 32
terrorists had been killed. The same day, the director of the FSB, Nikolai
Patrushev, affirmed that "34 gunmen were killed and an unspecified number
arrested."(126) By contrast, on 28 October, gzt.ru, a "centrist"
publication, reported that "50 terrorists -- 32 men and 18 women" had been
killed and "three others taken into custody."(127) The compromise figure of
40 dead terrorists was arrived at later.

A number of questions have been asked by analysts and journalists about
whether or not the de facto leader of the terrorists, Abubakar, had in fact
been killed. In June 2003, Moscow Prosecutor Avdyukov insisted that Ruslan
Abu-Khasanovich Elmurzaev's body had been found and identified.(128) In
March 2003, however, retired FSB Lieutenant Colonel Mikhail Trepashkin had
written that, following the events at Dubrovka, "I proposed to the
investigators that they try to identify 'Abubakar' in the first days after
the event. However, later an investigator telephoned and said that he could
not find the corpses of a number of people, including that of 'Abubakar,'
and therefore there would be no identification."(129) And journalist
Aleksandr Khinshtein has reported: "At first there existed a version that
Abubakar died during the storming of the House of Culture.... But a series
of examinations showed that there was no Abubakar in the hall."(130)
Despite Prosecutor Avdyukov's statement, it appears thus to be an open
question as to whether or not Abubakar was killed.

In October 2003, film director Sergei Govoroukhin, one of the volunteer
negotiators who had spoken at length with Abubakar at Dubrovka, stated his
belief that Abubakar was still alive. Despite his persistent requests, he
said, Russian prosecutors had proved unable to show him Abubakar's body.
"Moreover," Govorukhin continued, "two weeks ago, during a trip to
Chechnya, I asked intelligence [officers] of the Combined Group of Forces
of the Northern Caucasus whether it was true that Abubakar was in Chechnya.
I was uniformly given the same answer: 'Of course he is here. He has shown
himself rather actively in recent times, and only for the past month has
nothing been heard of him.' Therefore I can maintain absolutely accurately
that he is alive."(131)

Similarly, also in October 2003, an investigative report appearing in the
newspaper "Kommersant" noted that "until the summer of this year [2003],
when the case concerning the explosion at McDonald's restaurant was being
investigated by the procuracy of the western district [okrug] of Moscow,
Ruslan Elmurzaev was still on the wanted list. He was removed from the
wanted list only when the case was taken over by the Moscow [City]
Prosecutor's Office."(132) The same report also added this key detail: "As
sources in the FSB and [Interior Ministry] have made clear, the terrorists
themselves ordered that the bombs [in the Dubrovka theater] be rendered
harmless before the seizing of the hostages. Abubakar was supposedly afraid
of accidental explosions."(133)

Aftermath Of The Hostage-Taking Incident

On the evening of 6 February 2003, a sensation of sorts was created when
"the head of the operational-investigative department of the MUR [Moscow
Criminal Investigations Office], Yevgenii Taratorin, made an unexpected
announcement on the television program 'Man and the Law.'" In Taratorin's
words, "In October-November of last year, in addition to seizing the
theater center at Dubrovka, the band of Movsar Baraev planned explosions in
the Moscow underground, at a popular restaurant, and at the Tchaikovsky
Concert Hall. In the words of the policeman, the operatives of the
capital's criminal-investigation unit were able to avert all of these
terrorist acts." Following the explosion of the "Tavriya" car bomb at
McDonald's restaurant on Porkryshkin Street in Moscow on 19 October,
Taratorin related, the MUR discovered "in the center of Moscow at the
Tchaikovsky Concert Hall in direct proximity to the GAI [traffic police]
post an automobile of silver color containing explosives." Quick action by
the MUR and the arrest of certain of the terrorists, Taratorin claimed,
forced the hostage takers to move up the date of their assault on the
theater at Dubrovka from 7 November to 23 October.

According to Taratorin, "on 24 October, the operatives averted two other
terrorist acts: the explosion of an automobile at the Pyramid [Restaurant]
in Pushkin Square and the self-detonation of a female suicide bomber at one
of the stations of the capital's underground." The terrorists, sensing the
danger of a rapid unmasking, then fled to the North Caucasus region.
(Taratorin appears here to be exaggerating the achievements of the MUR: the
bombings failed to occur, as we have seen, most likely either because the
terrorists "exhibited cowardice" or because the bombs themselves were
faulty in design or construction.)

In the course of his televised statement, Taratorin added that, in November
2002, in the village of Chernoe in Moscow Oblast, the police had
"discovered a house in which, among apples, there was found ammunition and,
next to the cottage, a hiding place in which explosives brought from
Ingushetia had first been concealed."(134) (The explosives, he said, had
later been transferred to two garages located on Leninskii Prospekt and
Ogorodnyi Proezd in Moscow.) In January 2003, Taratorin added, two of the
intended car bombs had been found in a parking lot off Zvenigorod Highway.

Most sensationally of all, Taratorin claimed that "five people" in all had
been arrested for participating in the terrorist act. Queried about this
statement, the Russian Prosecutor-General's Office insisted heatedly that
only two persons had so far been arrested, one of them the walk-on Chechen
volunteer Zaurbek Talikhigov. Journalists soon discovered, however, that
"three more Chechens whom they had connected to Dubrovka had been released
last November [2002]."(135)

Following this televised statement by the MUR colonel, "the procuracy
opened against Yevgenii Taratorin a [criminal] case for his having revealed
a secret of the investigation. But this did not stop the colonel -- in
particular, he intended to meet with journalists...in order to relate to
them the details of the investigation in the course of which the MUR
officers did not succeed in finding understanding on the part of the
'neighbors' from the FSB."(136) Taratorin was placed under arrest by the
FSB on 23 June 2003, as part of a putative "campaign against werewolves" in
the Russian Interior Ministry.(137) This lengthy campaign and media
reactions to it strongly suggested that the arrest of Taratorin, like that
of Trepashkin, was a selective one triggered solely by the need to silence
an official who had begun to expose the fabric of lies that constituted the
official version of events.

Taratorin's revelations were embarrassing to the FSB and the
Prosecutor-General's Office because they drew attention to the fact that
two major suspects who had been seized by police at Chernoe on 22 November
2002 had been released: a recently retired GRU major, Arman Menkeev; and a
Chechen originally from Vedeno, Khampash Sobraliev, the man who had
collected the suicide belts from the women terrorists on 24 October after
they had apparently failed to work. "For a long time," however, "Kh.
Sobraliev was not charged under Article 205 of the Criminal Code of the
Russian Federation (terrorism). This led to his refusal to cooperate with
the investigators."(138) In an article appearing in April 2003, journalist
Zinaida Lobanova noted that Khampash Sobraliev, Arman Menkeev, and Alikhan
Mezhiev "were not charged and were then set free."(139) Only Akhyad
Mezhiev, Alikhan's brother, who had been arrested on 28 October 2002, was
still being kept in custody.

When the police raided the terrorist base at Chernoe in November 2002,
another of the terrorists, Aslambek Khaskhanov, reportedly managed to
escape from the premises. In late April 2003, however, Khaskhanov was
located and then arrested in Ingushetia. "The Chechen had made his way
[from Moscow] to Grozny and concealed himself for almost half a year. At
the end of April [2003], he was taken into custody and brought to Moscow.
During interrogations he related that in one of the homes on Nosovikhinskii
Highway [in Chernoe] were concealed plastic explosives. The operatives
arrived with dogs trained to sniff out explosives at House No. 100."(140)
Under interrogation, Khaskhanov reportedly told the police about a huge
cache of explosives hidden near the house: 400 kilograms of plastic
explosives in total. "'Four hundred kilos of plastic explosives,' whistled
one expert. 'That is enough to blow the Kremlin and Red Square to the
devil."(141)

In an interview appearing in the government newspaper "Rossiiskaya gazeta"
in June 2003, then Moscow City Prosecutor Avdyukov reported that, in
addition to Khaskhanov, "Aslan Murdalov, the brothers Alikhan and Akhyad
Mezhiev, Khampash Sobraliev, and Arman Menkeev are all now under arrest."(142)

Once Avdyukov and other Moscow prosecutors had been purged from their
posts, a "cleansed" Moscow Prosecutor's Office began to surface a new and
radically altered version of events. The press office of the procuracy
informed "Kommersant" on 22 October 2003 that five individuals -- Aslambek
Khaskhanov, Aslan Murdalov, the brothers Alikhan and Akhyad Mezhiev, and
Khampash Sobraliev -- were now being charged with "belonging to a group
which as far back as 2001 had been sent by Shamil Basaev to commit
terrorist acts in Moscow."(143) Significantly, retired GRU Major Menkeev
was no longer being charged by the Moscow City Prosecutor's Office. Menkeev
confirmed this fact to the newspaper "Versiya," noting that he had been
released from prison on 20 October 2003. "I want to say that all charges
concerning my participation in a terrorist act have been dropped," Menkeev
emphasized.(144)

The version of events being related by the press department of the Moscow
City Prosecutor's Office in October 2003 differed in major ways from the
former account of the now-purged Mikhail Avdyukov-led procuracy.(145)
According to the new version, "the Urus-Martan Wahhabi [Aslambek]
Khaskhanov" had, in the fall of 2001, sent a team consisting of seven
rebels to Moscow. Once there, they had purchased three vehicles, one of
them a "Tavriya," "which they intended to mine and blow up in parking lots
at the buildings of the State Duma [!] and at the McDonald's restaurant at
Pushkin Square." The rebels had received plastic explosives "from persons
who have not been identified by investigators." It emerged, however, that
the plastic explosive employed by the rebels was in fact "imitation plastic
explosive" which originally had "a Ministry of Defense origin." "It is
fully possible," the account continued, "that the imitation plastic
explosive was provided to the terrorists of Khaskhanov by the former
employee of the GRU, Major Arman Menkeev, a specialist in explosive
substances." Not surprisingly, the account noted, the bombs placed at the
building of the State Duma and in Pushkin Square had failed to work. Did
this whole operation of 2001 -- if it in fact occurred -- escape official
notice completely? This would be quite extraordinary, especially in the
wake of 11 September 2001.

"The group of Aslambek Khaskhanov," the revised Moscow City Prosecutor's
Office account continued, "came to Moscow a second time, already in the
fall of 2002. This time the terrorists also planned to commit a series of
explosions after which, making use of the panic and confusion, one other
group of rebels under the command of Movsar Baraev and Ruslan Elmurzaev
(Abubakar) was to perform a mass seizure of hostages." On 19 October, the
group, using a land mine (fugas), set off a car bomb in a "Tavriya" vehicle
parked at the McDonald's on Pokryshkin Street. Once the Baraevites had
seized the theater building, the Khaskhanov group then chose to go
underground.

The new and quite drastically revised version of events currently being put
out by the post-purge Moscow City Prosecutor's Office strikes one as, in
essence, a complete fabrication. Most of the key discoveries made by the
MUR and by the now-"cleansed" former Moscow procuracy have been adroitly
swept under a rug, while Arman Menkeev's role in the events of October 2002
is now passed over in total silence.

Conclusion

Elements among both the Russian leadership and the power ministries and
among the Chechen extremists obtained their principal goals in the assault
on the theater at Dubrovka: namely, an end was put to the negotiation
process while Aslan Maskhadov's reputation was besmirched, and the
terrorists, for their part, had an opportunity to stage a grandiose
fund-raiser. The Russian authorities, moreover, were now able to
demonstrate to the entire world that Moscow, too, had been a victim of an
Al-Qaeda-style Chechen terrorist act. As in 1999, the chief victims of
these terrorist acts were the average citizens of Moscow. The bulk of the
evidence, as we have seen, points to significant collusion having occurred
on the part of the Chechen extremists and elements of the Russian
leadership in the carrying out of the Dubrovka events.

[DJ: Complete footnotes available on request.]
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.

**********

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