31.08.2005 - A court in the city of Nizhny Tagil has released former FSB officer Mikhail Trepashkin. As a former intelligence officer and lawyer, Trepashkin led a probe into the 1999 apartment bombings - attacks that claimed the lives of over 200 people in Moscow. His supporters claimed Trepashkin was punished for his attempts to reveal the truth.

The court released the former FSB officer on parole, his defense lawyer, Yelena Lipster said Wednesday. Trepashkin returned home today, she said adding that the court ruling was absolutely unexpected for him and his defense team.

A Moscow military court sentenced Mikhail Trepashkin to four years in a penal colony for possessing an unregistered weapon and disclosing state secrets, the lawyer recalled.

Trepashkin and his supporters said that the charges against him were politically motivated - the former FSB agent led a lone investigation into the 1999 apartment bombings that were blamed on Chechen separatists.

Later the Supreme Court upheld the sentence handed down to Trepashkin.

Trepashkin's supporters said his only crime was to have exposed evidence that pointed to government complicity in the killing of more than a hundred civilians during the 1999 apartment bombings in Moscow. Shortly before he was due to present this evidence in court, police stopped him on the road and claimed they found a gun in the trunk of his car. - mosnews

18.09.2005 - Former FSB officer, Mikhail Trepashkin, was taken into custody Sunday after a Russian court overturned his early release. Trepashkin had won the support of human rights activist for his efforts to investigate alleged government complicity in the country's 1999 apartment bombings that claimed over 200 lives. Mikhail Trepashkin, was taken back into custody on Sunday, his wife informed the Interfax news agency.

On Sunday morning Trepashkin himself told Interfax that his house was surrounded by some 20 police officers who had arrived there to arrest him.

On Friday, Mikhail Trepashkin, sentenced earlier to four years in prison for possessing an unregistered weapon and disclosing state secrets, was ordered by the Sverdlov regional court to remains in custody, after the prosecutor's office protested a lower court ruling to release him on parole, his lawyer, Yelena Liptser said.

In late August, a Nizhny Tagil court ordered the release of the former FSB officer on parole.

Trepashkin and his supporters said that the charges against him were politically motivated - the former FSB agent led a lone investigation into the 1999 apartment bombings that were blamed on Chechen separatists.

Trepashkin's supporters said his only crime was to have exposed evidence that pointed to government complicity in the killing of more than a hundred civilians during the 1999 apartment bombings in Moscow. Shortly before he was due to present his evidence in court, police stopped him on the road and claimed they found a gun in the trunk of his car.

On Sunday, Trepashkin's lawyers denounced their client's arrest saying that by overturning an earlier sentence the higher court had not, however, sanctioned his arrest but merely ordered a retrial of his case.

Pending retrial Trepashkin was to stay at large, Yelena Liptser told Interfax. - mosnews

After six months of work, investigators said Thursday they still believe Chechen rebels may have been behind the apartment building explosions in Moscow, Buinaksk and Volgodonsk, but they have no evidence to prove it.

And of the 26 people on the list of suspects, none is an ethnic Chechen.

The explosions in September, which killed some 300 people, were immediately blamed on rebels from Chechnya and used to help win public support for the military offensive.

source

more

"The actions of criminals, terrorists which we have to confront even today are aimed against all that," he said.

[extract 2]..."Russian President Vladimir Putin on December 8, 2003 hailed as a step toward democracy the poll that stacked parliament with his allies but Western observers called it 'overwhelmingly distorted' and Washington expressed concern. The fourth such election since the Soviet Union's collapse crushed Putin's Communist and liberal opponents -- prompting warnings of a return to authoritarian rule -- and effectively guaranteed him a second term in March's presidential poll ."

Suicide Bombing Kills Five in Moscow Tue December 9, 2003 Reuters

Just like Madrid?

The investigation into the recent spate of terrorist attacks took a confusing twist Thursday when the Interior Ministry in Chechnya announced that the suspected suicide bomber of a Tu-134 airplane was alive and well and that her passport found at the crash site was forged.

A Chechen Interior Ministry spokesman told Rossiiskaya Gazeta that Amanat Nagayeva, the main suspect in the Aug. 24 bombing of the Moscow-Volgograd flight, was alive and selling toys in the Rostov region. Officials: Tu-134 Suspect Is Alive

Armed attackers, some wearing suicide-bomb belts, seized a school in a Russian region bordering Chechnya on Wednesday and were holding hundreds of hostages, including 200 children.

The assault came a day after a suicide bomber killed 10 people in Moscow.

The seizure began after a ceremony marking the first day of the Russian school year, reports said, when it was likely that many parents had accompanied their children to class.

Both the school attack and the Moscow bombing appeared to be the work of Chechen rebels or their sympathizers, but there was no evidence of any direct link. The two strikes came just a week after two Russian planes carrying 90 people crashed almost simultaneously in what officials also say were terrorist bombings.

- source

Distraught Moscow residents laid flowers Wednesday outside a subway station where a suicide bomber killed 10 people, while a militant Muslim group that claimed responsibility for the crash of two Russian airliners last week said it was also behind the latest attack.

Police promised heightened security on the sprawling city's transit system, one of the world's busiest and relied on by many of the city's estimated 10 million people. But the attack was only the latest in a string of violence in the capital and elsewhere that the government has appeared helpless to prevent.

Most of the violence has been blamed on rebels in the breakaway republic of Chechnya or their sympathizers. Underscoring Russia's vulnerability, more than a dozen attackers, some wrapped in suicide belts, seized a school in the region of North Ossetia Wednesday morning and were holding hundreds of hostages, including some 200 children, news reports said. The region borders Chechnya. - source

This was reported by the North Ossetian president, Alexander Dzasokhov, as the siege entered its third day.

Authorities are not considering the use of force to resolve the standoff, Mr Dzasokhov added.

Latest reports suggest that 1,000 hostages may be held in the school, rather than the official figure of 354. - BBC

Putin said in nationally televised comments from the Kremlin. "All the actions of our forces ... will be devoted to solving this task," a stern-looking Putin said during a meeting with visiting Jordanian King Abdullah. - source

More than 200 wounded were taken to hospitals, Interfax said, citing Lev Dzugayev, spokesman for North Ossetia's government. Russian broadcasters NTV and Rossiya showed children escaping and gunfire and explosions could be heard during the broadcasts.

Russian forces haven't taken the area fully under control and gunfire can be heard coming from near the gym where the hostages were held, Sky News reported from the scene. Interfax earlier reported that the area was almost under control.

``Most of the children who had been taken hostage are still alive,'' NTV television reported from the scene. ``There are very many wounded.''

Russian soldiers opened fire at terrorists who tried to flee among the hostages, state-owned Itar-Tass said. Tank fire was heard near a house where some of the terrorists were holed up after fleeing the school, Interfax reported. The building was surrounded by Russian forces, the news service said.

At least one hostage-taker was captured and five killed, Itar- Tass reported. - Bloomberg

There is confusion as to why the Russian forces went in, as the operation seems to have been unplanned.

Hundreds of children were freed in the seizure, though some are badly injured.

Several of the hostage takers are also reported to have died in exchanges of fire with troops as they tried to escape, Reuters reports.

Some are reported to have blown themselves up, but others appear to have got away, says the BBC's Jonathan Charles.

Itar-Tass news agency said a group were holed up in another building in the area.

Russian security officials said they had still been intending the negotiate with the hostage-takers.

"I want to point out that no military action was planned," said regional Federal Security Service chief Valery Andreyev. "We were planning further talks."

Security forces had opened fire to save the lives of hostages who were being fired on by gunmen, he said. - BBC

"The explosives, weapons and military equipment were taken into the school in summer ... when building work was being carried out," an unnamed regional security source was quoted as saying by the agency. - source

An arsenal was found under the assembly room floor in the Alkhazurovo village school, Urus Martan district in Chechnya, announced the federal Interior Ministry interim press centre based in Khankala near Grozny.

Men of the organised crime squad reported a grenade-thrower, seven Kalashnikov automatics, 14 hand-grenades, 100 grams of plastique, 200 grams of TNT, an antipersonnel mine and a large stock of cartridges found. source

On Saturday at 12 noon near the building of the Palace of Culture a meeting was held. At first they said that people should take the bodies of their dead children to Vladikavkaz, and put them on the main square outside the Regional administrative HQ so that Dzasokhov would have to confront the reality of his success. But Beslan was a closed town in a state of emergency- no one comes in, no one goes out. For the first time people were asked for their papers on entry or exit. Local government HQ had its security system reinforced. People came in droves to the square outside the Palace of Culture. No less than 1000 gathered there. They were those who had been unable to find their loved ones in the hospitals and morgues and processing points in Beslan. By morning 250 dead had been identified. By Saturday evening- 320. There were 100 unidentified bodies. Women- weeping told of headless corpses of children lying unidentified in morgues. Others had had their arms, or legs blown off. But most died of gunshot wounds. The officials from the Ministry of Emergencies said that on Saturday over 140 bodies had been found in the rubble of the school, and that there was a minimum of 300 more still to remove. It is claimed that the hostage takers used these kids as a human shield. Equally likely- they were simply caught in the crossfire, caught in the rain of bullets that began when the Russian special forces opened fire.

Details emerge: the terrorists had taken weapons and ammunition into the school prior to the event. In August there was a warning of a future terrorist attack on the town- that the local authorities chose to ignore. In spite of all this- officials claim the assault a success. The head of the local Secret Police (FSB) had only one regret that more Spetsnaz troops died than had been predicted. Someone in the audience of the meeting- which no local or federal government official attended- shouted: and what about the hostages? But there was no time for questions. The FSB man got up an left. - ELENA MILASHINA

[Part 1] [Part 2]

MOSCOW, Sept. 5 -- The Russian government admitted Sunday that it lied to its people about the scale of the hostage crisis that ended with more than 300 children, parents and teachers dead in southern Russia, making an extraordinary admission through state television after days of intense criticism from citizens.

As the bereaved families of Beslan began to lay their loved ones to rest Sunday, the Kremlin-controlled Rossiya network aired gripping, gruesome footage it had withheld from the public for days and said government officials had deliberately deceived the world about the number of hostages inside School No. 1.

"At such moments," anchor Sergei Brilyov declared, "society needs the truth."

The admission of an effort to minimize the magnitude of a hostage crisis that ensnared about 1,200 people, most of them children, marked a sharp turnabout for the government of President Vladimir Putin. In previous crises with mass fatalities, such as the sinking of the nuclear submarine Kursk in 2000 and the 2002 siege of a Moscow theater, officials covered up key facts as well, but afterward never acknowledged doing so.

"It doesn't suit our president," a Kremlin political consultant, Gleb Pavlovsky, said on the broadcast. "Lies, which really acted in the terrorists' favor, did not suit him at all. Lies were weakening us and making the terrorists more violent." - Yahoo News

Over-all, it was an impressive show of unity. But there was one instance of police trying to rip away a few banners that were out of sync with the officially-approved messages, including one that lamented a lack of free speech.

And it was not difficult to find people whose anger at the massacre in Beslan was also directed at the Kremlin.

"I'm not excusing the terrorists, but we've been lied to from the start," shouted Termorass Bestayev, 50, to a small circle of people.

"Since Putin's arrival there has been more terrorism and more fear, and the country is becoming more totalitarian."

"Who's paying you?" a man asked, noting that Bestayev is an ethnic Ossetian. "You're not one of us, get out of here." source

United in their ignorance Russians remain in dark about hostage drama Even basic details about crisis have been withheld

News agencies later spoke of eight gunmen killed, three arrested and four still at large. - source

Mr Andreev said during the evening that 10 of the hostage-takers who had been killed were foreign - nine of them "Arabs" and one African.

Other local security officials said Shamil Basaev, the rebel Chechen warlord, and Abu Omar As-Seif, a radical Islamic Wahhabite financier, had backed the operation, which was led by Magomed Yevloyev. - Financial Times

"We're talking about an entire international organization here," Fridinsky told Interfax. "Among the bandits there are Chechens, Ingush, Kazakhs, Arabs and Slavs." Whether the two militants not included in Fridinsky's body count had been detained or were still at large was not immediately clear. Moscow Times

"They gathered us in a forest, a person known as 'commander', and they said that we must seize a school in Beslan. They said this task was ordered by (Chechen rebel leader Aslan) Maskhadov and Basayev," the dark-haired young man said haltingly.

The detained suspect, who said there were Uzbeks, Arabs and Chechens among the hostage-takers, added that he had been told the aim of the raid was to "provoke a war across the Caucasus". - channel News Asia

September 07 - A militant detained in the bloody school seige in Southern Russia has said that "the task had been set" by former Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov and separatist warlord Shamil Basayev to unleash a regional war.

"A man nicknamed Colonel gathered us in the forest, and they said: 'you must seize a school in Beslan'. They said that this task had been set by Maskhadov and Basayev," the detained man said in his testimony broadcast by state-run Rossiya television channel last night.

"When we asked Colonel why we had to do this and what the objective was, he, Colonel, said: 'because is it necessary to unleash a war across the entire Caucasus,'" he was quoted as saying by Interfax. - source

Under this headline, the Russians news agency KMNews.ru today carries an unsigned commentary, laying the blame for the Beslan events at the doorstep of U.S. and British agencies, in rather explicit terms.

Its point of departure is that Shamil Basayev, the brutal Chechen field commander, has been linked to the attack (something that Putin advisor Aslambek Aslakhanov yesterday said was known to the Russian FSB).

The article plays up the recent rapprochement of London and Washington with key representatives of Aslan Maskhadov: Britain's giving asylum to Akhmad Zakayev (December 2003) and the USA doing the same for Ilyas Akhmadov (August 2004).

KMNews writes: "In early August, ... `Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Chechen Republic-Ichkeria' Ilyas Akhmadov received political asylum in the USA. And for his `outstanding services,' Akhmadov received a Reagan-Fascell grant, including a monthly stipend, medical insurance, and a well-equipped office with all the support services that might be needed, including the possibility of meetings with people from political circles and leading U.S. media.... - source

"It appears to be a deliberate provocation to reignite the conflict between Ingushetia and North Ossetia, to extend the range of the chaos," said Fiona Hill, a scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington who was among a group of Westerners that met with Putin on Monday.

"It's very easy to stir up the region if you want to, and somebody wants to. This is a wake-up call. The whole of the Caucasus is going to go up at this rate."

Putin raised the specter of the region breaking apart from Moscow during a meeting with Hill and other visiting Westerners late Monday. "There's a Yugoslavia variant here," he said, according to notes taken by Eileen O'Connor, a participant. "It would be difficult to imagine the consequences for the rest of the world. Bear in mind Russia is a nuclear power."

The four leaders inside the school represented the spectrum of the region's ethnic groups: a Chechen, a Russian, an Ingush and an Ossetian, according to tentative identifications by Russian officials. What remained unclear was the extent of the involvement of Arab fighters, if any. Russian officials initially said 10 of the hostage-takers were Arabs, but surviving hostages said in interviews that they saw no Arabs and not one was identified as a leader to outside negotiators. - msnbc

It has been confirmed that among the terrorists who took hostages at a school in North Ossetia, Russia, there were some Korean-Russians (Goryeo-in in Korean), greatly shocking expatriate Koreans residing in Russia and the Korean-Russian community. Anxiety is increasing among them that they may become victims of terrorism targeting non-Caucasians committed by skinheads and gangs.

Although they were not Korean citizens, as they were ethnic Koreans, we are taking additional measures such as requesting their precise identity from authorities."

Russian news agency RIA Novosti, quoting Sergei Fridinsky, deputy prosecutor general for the Southern Federal District, reported Monday afternoon (local time) that, The attackers are composed of diverse nationalities and there were Chechens, Tatars, Kazakhs and even Koreans among the attackers - Chosun

Russia took Chechen rebels' relatives hostage

It was 6am when Russian soldiers hoisted themselves over the wall, crashed through the window and broke down the front door.

Shouting, shoving and kicking, the soldiers pushed 67-year-old Khavazh Semiyev and his wife into a truck waiting outside, then went back for the others - his two sons and two nephews, his son's wife, his 52-year-old sister. Then - and Mr Semiyev could not believe his old eyes - they went back for his grandchildren: Mansur, 11, Malkhazni, 9, and Mamed, 7.

The family, all in their nightclothes, were driven through the empty streets of the small Chechen town of Znamenskoye to the Russian Army's command centre at Khankala. There, the men were forced to their knees. Sacks were pulled over their heads, and their hands tied behind their backs. For the next 24 hours, anyone who moved from that position got kicked.

One day into the seizure of more than 1000 hostages by suspected Chechen separatists in the town of Beslan, Russia now had its own hostages. About 40 family members of senior Chechen rebel leaders were assembled at Khankala on Thursday, a day after the hostage seizure in Beslan, until Saturday, the day after it ended.

Mr Semiyev's daughter, Kusama, is the wife of the Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov. Around him were assembled the extended families of Mr Maskhadov, the former Chechen president, and of the Chechen warlords Shamil Basayev and Doku Umarov.

"We figured they wanted to exchange us for the hostages in Beslan," Mr Semiyev said once back home.

The Russian Government says it was protecting the families' lives. A statement from operations headquarters in the Northern Caucasus said Russian forces obtained intelligence that rebel leaders planned to kill several of their own relatives and then accuse Russian law-enforcement agencies of murdering them. - source

Russia hasn't identified any Chechens among the terrorists in Beslan, the country's Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov told Western academics at a meeting today, Harvard University's Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies associate director Marshall Goldman said on Radio Echo Moscow. Goldman participated in meetings with Ivanov and President Vladimir Putin.

``Putin did talk extensively about Chechnya and he's worried that if it goes, then. . .the country may disintegrate,'' Goldman said.

Fewer than half of killed terrorists have been identified so far, and there are no Chechens among the identified corpses, a ministry spokesman Igor Kastyshin said. The security services have said 32 terrorists were killed in Beslan.

``We are dealing with the direct intervention of international terrorism against Russia, a full-scale war,'' Putin told the nation in a televised address Saturday. ``The mobilization of the nation in the face of the common danger is the most important thing.'' - source

...the afternoon soon turned into an impromptu town meeting, held in the blackened gymnasium where many of the hostages died. A few voices in the crowd called for calm, but many insisted that the deaths of so many of Beslan's children had to be avenged.

"Let's gather up all of the men in the villages and fight!" shouted one man. "If we don't act now, when we calm down we'll end up not doing anything at all," yelled a middle-aged woman, shaking her fist in the air.

Nikolai Betiyev, 52, urged restraint. "Let's bury the bodies first before we think of doing anything. We need to calm down!"

"We won't ever forget this," shouted back Taimuraz Metsiyev, a broad-chested, 33-year-old Ossetian who lost several friends and relatives in the siege. "So don't say that in time we'll learn to accept this, and that we have to concentrate on burying our children."

"The people who don't want to fight say, 'So many innocent lives will suffer if we take up arms,"' Metsiyev continued. "Well, we've already suffered enough. It's time to fight." - The Age

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, last night refused to order a public inquiry into how the Beslan school was captured by gunmen and then ended with such a high death toll, and told the Guardian that people who call for talks with Chechen leaders have no conscience. - source

Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected any dialogue with Chechen separatists, blamed for at least 335 deaths in the school hostage siege, as hundreds of thousands joined rallies against terrorism.

"Why don't you meet Osama bin Laden, invite him to Brussels or to the White House and engage in talks, ask him what he wants and give it to him so he leaves you in peace?" Putin said in a meeting with foreign journalists late on Monday.

"You find it possible to set some limitations in your dealings with these bastards, so why should we talk to people who are child-killers?" he said, ruling out a public inquiry into the operation to retake the school.

[snip]

Anti-terrorism rallies, which started on Monday to accompany the two days of official mourning for the victims of the Beslan siege, will culminate in a mass event outside the Kremlin.

But opposition politicians said the rally was intended to parry criticism of the Kremlin's handling of the crisis and Putin's failure to ensure security for ordinary Russians.

Pressure on the media to toe the line increased on Monday with the sacking of the editor of the respected daily Izvestia, which splashed harrowing pictures in its Saturday edition.

"There is a need for a political protest, but the slogans which are being prepared do not reflect what needs to be done to avert a repetition of the tragedy," liberal politician Irina Khakamada told Ekho Moskvy radio

"The rally will only reflect state ideology." - source

In his first post-Beslan interview, Putin, in a tone reminiscent of President George W Bush's post-September 11 behavior, has declared Russia to be in a "war" with enemies that his defense minister, Sergei Ivanov, has branded as "unseen" and "borderless".

Cognitively then, the mass killings in Russia, including the victims of downed Russian airplanes and Moscow subway commuters, have seemingly spurred a politico-ideological turn around vis-a-vis the US, viewed with suspicion by the Kremlin for exploiting the September 11 tragedies for geopolitical gains at Russia's doorsteps in Central Asia and elsewhere in the Middle East, prompting Russian policy-makers to rethink their cynical gaze at the US war on global terrorism, eg, the same Ivanov has been on record for making paranoid statements about a post September 11 "dense ring of military and intelligence gathering installations belonging to the US".

In the light of the severity of the Chechen-led terrorist attacks, reportedly with participation by members of al-Qaeda, Ivanov and other like-minded people around Putin are likely more apt to make similar statements about the threat of Islamist terrorism.

[snip][note:who stands to gain?]

Putin has vowed to reorganize Russia's anti-terror system and to set up a new crisis-management system, indeed a remedy too late for the Beslan victims and their relatives, who may have benefited from a more patient counter-terrorist strategy which proved rather successful in 1996 when the Chechen rebels invaded the Dagestan towns of Kiziliar and Pervomaiska and held some 2,000 hostages. whom they freed after two weeks of negotiations. Instead, the Beslan tragedy turns out to be the recycling of another botched rescue attempt - in June 1996 when some 150 hostages held by Chechens in a hospital in Budennovsk were killed. - source

Organisers of the "protest against terror", who included the Kremlin, said that more than 100,000 people would turn out for the demonstration, which comes at the end of a two-day official mourning period for the 335 people killed in the siege.

"A Country in Mourning," headlined the daily Izvestia, picturing a girl with her head in her hands kneeling amid a sea of flowers.

Over 400 wounded, including more than 200 children, are still being treated in hospital.

However many have expressed regret that Russians were only turning out to remember the dead four days after the bloody end to the siege, and in a rally blessed by the Kremlin rather than a spontaneous outpouring of grief.

"We did not go out onto the streets on September 1 (the day the crisis started) nor at the weekend (after it ended). People wanted to wait until the authorities called a well organised meeting," said the Vedemosti daily.

"Because people have realised the authorities must not be irritated, questions must not be asked about Chechnya, otherwise the president will get annoyed," it said.

However there was little chance that the Moscow rally would contain any expressions of anger against government officials. All participants were obliged to undergo security checks and arrive two hours in advance. - source

A woman who rushed out of the school after the explosion said one of the gunmen hit a wire accidentally and caused the explosion, Aushev told. We asked them to stop the firing. We called (the terrorists by mobile phone). They said, ?We have stopped shooting, you are shooting.? We gave the command to stop the shooting. But a stupid third force occurred there, I do not know how they appeared there, we are investigating this. Some 'militia' with assault rifles decided to free the hostages themselves. And they opened fire at that school! Aushev was quoted by the paper as saying. The terrorists thought it was an assault by Russian troops and blew up their explosives that caused the school roof to collapse. After that, the troops started the assault. - source

Alarm bells are ringing in Russian media circles after the alleged poisoning of Anna Politkovskaya, one of the most outspoken critics of Vladimir Putin's policy on Chechnya, and the apparent sacking of the editor of Izvestia today. Politkovskaya, who writes for the current affairs magazine Novaya Gazeta, was on her way to the siege in Beslan from Moscow when she collapsed mysteriously. According to the Moscow Times today, "Politkovskaya was flying from Vnukovo Airport to Rostov-on-Don and fainted on the plane. Immediately after landing, she was taken to a local hospital, where doctors found she had been poisoned, Novaya Gazeta editor Dmitry Muratov told the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists." Guardian

Having completed his job, the cameraman handed the tape to Aushev. Some hostages believe, this was done so that Aushev could hand the tape to Vladimir Putin. What was on the tape apart from the footage showing exhausted children? Unfortunately, Ruslan Aushev could not be reached on the phone for comment. Neither was Murat Zyazikov available to clarify why he had ignored the attackers call for talks. - MosNews

Russia's NTV television has shown graphic footage shot by the militants who took more than a thousand hostages in a school in Beslan in the south of the country last week.

The pictures showed militants including a masked and heavily armed man and a woman in Arab-style black headdress, as well as hundreds of hostages sitting in the gymnasium which later became a battleground. At least 335 people, around a half of them children, died when Russian troops stormed the school.

Blood was smeared on the floor. Bombs hung from a basketball hoop and from a wire suspended across the room. Another lay on the floor in plastic container.

One militant squatted, apparently working on a bomb with tape and wire clippers. The few spaces left by the hostages, including women fanning themselves in the heat and children with their hands on their heads, were strewn with wires and what appeared to be bomb-making equipment.

One militant stood with his foot on a book which the commentary said contained a trip-switch to activate a bomb. Elsewhere a rocket-propelled grenade lay unattended.

The video lasted around a minute and ended with the sound of one of the hostage-takers murmuring into his mobile phone. He was not speaking Russian. - source

MOSCOW, July 7 -- The Kremlin loyalist appointed this week to run Russia's NTV television network decided to cancel the talk show "Freedom of Speech" in his first full day on the job, a move that would effectively leave the Russian airwaves without a single independent-minded political program.

On Monday, the state-controlled natural gas monopoly Gazprom, which took over NTV in 2001, fired the network's general director and replaced him with Vladimir Kulistikov, head of news programming at the state-run Rossiya channel, known for fawning nightly news coverage of President Vladimir Putin. - source

NTV links news site

April 18, 2001 - Fedorov said he does not doubt that the recent events between Gazprom and NTV are politicized, but he questioned the simplistic scenario of Putin giving a simple order to Gazprom, which it carries out. The reality is much more complex. It is not entirely logical that Putin planned to have this loud political scandal eclipse what Fedorov called "the best speech a Russian president has made in years." The situation benefits Gazprom more than it benefits Putin - the discussion has shifted from Gazprom's shady dealings and its inefficiency to NTV. Fedorov conjectured that someone is probably trying to be useful to President Putin, since Putin probably does have "a grudge" against Mr. Gusinsky.

Whoever's political decision this action was, it is not a purely business affair. If Gazprom was merely taking over a debtor, it would treat NTV as an investment, and attempt to preserve its value. Firing the journalists that make up the value of NTV is not a rational business tactic. No one at Gazprom wants to discuss the financial side of the affair, Fedorov said. He compared Alfred Kokh and Boris Jordan to mercenaries, hired to accomplish an immoral task. It was a mistake for the government to have allowed this situation to degenerate to this point, Fedorov stated. - Carnegie Endowment

12 October, 2001 - Russia's Gazprom has announced the sale of all its media assets, marking a strategic about-face at the world's biggest gas company. Gazprom, which is minority state-owned and close to the Russian government, has built up stakes in newspapers, magazine and broadcast media over the past few years.

Its most controversial acquisition was the takeover in April of NTV, Russia's only privately-owned nationwide broadcaster.

But Alexei Miller, Gazprom's new chief executive, said all the stakes would be sold, and announced the resignation of Alfred Kokh, the Gazprom executive who headed the firm's media subsidiary. - BBC

Russian TV channel sacks anchor

Wednesday, 2 June, 2004 - One of Russia's most popular TV journalists has been sacked and his weekly news review programme axed. Leonid Parfyonov was fired by the NTV channel after his programme aired an interview with the widow of a murdered Chechen rebel leader.

He was a well-respected journalist and often criticised the government.

His sacking is the latest in a series of moves in recent years that have led some observers to conclude that censorship is creeping back in.

The BBC's Steve Rosenberg in Moscow says Mr Parfyonov was one of the few journalists allowed to be critical of the authorities.

NTV - Russia's first independent television station - was taken over by state-run gas monopoly Gazprom in 2001. - BBC

Friday, 28 June, 2002: Russian gas giant Gazprom replaced its chairman with a Kremlin aide during its annual general meeting on Friday. The move is a crucial part of the government's efforts to clean up the country's largest company.

Gazprom is the world's biggest gas producer and source of more than a quarter of Europe's supplies, accounting for 8% of Russia's gross domestic product. But it is also widely seen as a lumbering, state-owned utility plagued with corruption.

Putin's man

The removal of Rem Vyakhirev as chairman had been largely expected. He had been at Gazprom since its inception in 1989 and had had good relations with president Boris Yeltsin. But after Vladimir Putin became president things became rockier for Mr Vyakhirev. A year ago he was sacked as chief executive officer amid allegations of asset-stripping. He was replaced by Alexei Miller, an ally of President Vladimir Putin, and given the less-influential post of chairman. The board has replaced Mr Vyakhirev with Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of president Putin's administration and himself a former Gazprom chairman. - BBC

9/11 Conspirators Reveal Links with Chechen Fighters

The ring-leaders of the September 11 attacks in the United States had originally planned to travel to Chechnya to fight Russian federal troops in the breakaway region, before being waylaid into an al Qaeda plot to attack the United States instead, the September 11 commission disclosed in a report cited by The Washington Post.

The 9/11 commissions report on the investigations were published recently and cited previously secret interrogations of cell member Ramzi Binalshibh, revealing that the Hamburg radicals who carried out the attacks had been urged by a passenger on a German train to put off their mission to Chechnya. The mysterious passenger identified as Khalid Masri introduced them to Mauritanian businessman Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who later arranged a personal introduction to Osama bin Laden.

The Islamic radicals in the Hamburg cell that included chief hijacker Muhammad Atta had been planning to go to Chechnya and fight along with the Islamic separatist rebels there.

Slahi told the men that it was difficult to slip across the border into Chechnya. He encouraged them instead to go to Afghanistan. He assisted with their travel plans and arranged for them to meet operatives for al Qaeda in Pakistan, who in turn arranged a private meeting between Binalshibh and bin Laden in December 1999.

The Chechnya plot, meanwhile, was never realized.

Several terrorism experts have linked the al Qaeda terror network to Islamists fighting for independence in Chechnya. Numerous Saudi mercenaries are said to be fighting in Chechnya. - Moscow News