February 03, 2005
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0%2C%2C3-1468129%2C00.html
We're going to do it again, says man behind Beslan bloodbath
By Nick Sturdee
Russia's most wanted man has broken cover for the first time since
siege
THE Chechen rebel leader who masterminded the Beslan school siege last
autumn plans more such operations, despite his apparent remorse over
the deaths of more than 330 people — half of them children — in the
North Ossetia attack.
In his first interview since that bloodbath, Shamil Basayev says that
he is in a state of shock over what happened, but blames the Russians
for precipitating the bloody end of the siege. Mr Basayev, Russia’s
most wanted man with a $10 million bounty on his head for numerous
attacks, said he is willing to stand trial for his actions, but does
not renounce his war with the Kremlin or attacks on Russian civilians.
The interview, to be broadcast on Channel 4 News tonight, was obtained
after months of negotiations through intermediaries. It was filmed by
Mr Basayev’s entourage at an undisclosed location last month and the
video given to a journalist in the Middle East.
Mr Basayev said that he originally planned to seize one or possibly
two schools simultaneously in either Moscow or St Petersburg, but lack
of funds forced him to pick North Ossetia, a “Russia garrison in the
North Caucasus”, and thus the root of all things bad in war-torn
Chechnya, with the ‘silent consent of (the North Ossetian)
population.’
He says his intention was to offer the Russian leadership no chance of
achieving a “bloodless resolution” to the siege, forcing it to stop
the “genocide of the Chechen people”. He says he never thought the
Russian leadership would be willing to oversee the death of children,
but says that he was “cruelly mistaken” and that he was “not delighted
by what happened there”.
He claims that the collapse of the roof of the school gym was the
result of flame-throwers used by Russian special forces, not
explosives placed by the hostage-takers.
The bearded 40-year-old warlord, believed to be hiding in the
mountains of southern Chechnya, looks in good health, and speaks at
length in Russian. He sits in front of a banner proclaiming in Arabic:
“There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet”. He wears a
black T-shirt with ‘ANTI-TERROR’ written in white Cyrillic letters,
and explains that he considers the Kremlin, not himself, the
terrorists. He reads the questions from a laptop computer, and cradles
what he describes as a six-barrelled grenade launcher, a trophy from a
Russian base.
Mr Basayev denounces what he describes as the “bloody slaughter that
is raging in our land”, and cites not only the Koran and the prophet
Adam but also the Chinese sage Zheng He, Winston Churchill and even
Charles Darwin.
Mr Basayev states that he is “ready to answer before a court for my
actions, for my every step, because everyone should be equal before
justice regardless of the authority they hold, and of their position”.
He describes a meeting with his commander-in-chief and formal leader
of the Chechen resistance, Aslan Maskhadov, who apparently accused his
most effective lieutenant of going too far in Beslan.
Mr Basayev says he told Mr Maskhadov that he is “ready to stand before
a sharia court, and answer to it in all its severity if it judges I
should be punished”. He says that such a trial is not possible until
the Chechen war ends. He is willing to call a ceasefire and open
negotiations with the Russians, but only after the complete withdrawal
of Russian forces from Chechnya.
Mr Basayev states: “We are planning more Beslan-type operations in the
future because we are forced to do so.”
Justifying his attacks on civilian targets, he states: “We are at war
and we look at the reality, and not at whether the population has
weapons in their hands. We look at the reality of their participation
in this war.
“ People who approve of Putin’s policies, people who pay their taxes
for this war, people who send their soldiers to this war, priests who
sprinkle holy water on them . . . How can they be innocent? They are
just without weapons. Russian citizens are accomplices of this war, it
just may be that they have no weapons in their hands. Peaceful people
for us are those that don’t pay taxes for this war, people who don’t
participate, and who speak against this war.”
Mr Basayev’s interview is likely to deepen President Putin’s
embarrassment. The second Chechen war has raged since September 1999
when he was Prime Minister, and his pledge to crush the separatist
rebels helped win him the presidency in March 2000.
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