[list_indonesia] [ppiindia] Aslan Maskhadov's Final Hours
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- Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2005 23:43:08 +0100
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http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2005/03/10/003.html
Thursday, March 10, 2005. Issue 3121. Page 1.
Aslan Maskhadov's Final Hours
By Carl Schreck
Staff Writer
Aslan Maskhadov apparently spent his last days typing on two laptop
computers and eating fresh bread, yogurt and chocolate in an underground
concrete bunker packed with guns and explosives, officials said Wednesday.
But a shroud of mystery hung over how and when the Chechen rebel leader
died. Various accounts suggested that he was either killed by a grenade
blast, shot by FSB commandos, accidentally shot by a bodyguard, or perhaps
even killed by Chechen security forces two days before authorities declared
him dead Tuesday.
Federal Security Service commandos rolled into Tolstoy-Yurt in armored
vehicles early Tuesday, blocking off several streets and ordering
residents -- even local policemen -- back into their homes, town officials
told Kommersant.
After blocking off the town's center, the commandos closed in on a small,
single-story house on Ulitsa Suvorova, owned by a distant relative of
Maskhadov, suspected terrorist Saiderbek Yusupov, the newspaper said.
"The commandos broke down the door and went inside," an unidentified
participant in the operation was quoted as saying. "The owner of the house
offered no resistance, and he was taken outside.
"When asked where Maskhadov and his men were, he said they were in a bunker.
[Maskhadov and his men] could not shoot their way out of the bunker -- it
would have been easy for [the commandos] to throw grenades at them through
the hole. At first [the commandos] tried to make a deal with Maskhadov to
turn himself in. But he refused to talk to our guys."
The source said the commandos negotiated with three aides who were in the
bunker with Maskhadov for about an hour.
After Maskhadov refused to surrender, the commandos threw grenades into the
bunker, possibly killing him, Chechnya's interior minister, Ruslan Alkhanov,
told Kommersant.
Adding credence to that version, Interfax reported Wednesday that four
rebels in addition to Maskhadov had died in the operation.
Gazeta offered a slightly different version of events, saying the commandos
were met with automatic gunfire while trying to enter the bunker. Instead of
risking their lives, they decided to blow up a bunker wall, causing an
explosion that may have killed Maskhadov. It was unclear how they might have
blown up an underground bunker wall.
Ilya Shabalkin, spokesman for the federal forces in Chechnya, did not add
any clarity to how Maskhadov was killed. He told Russian media that
Maskhadov died from wounds suffered in the grenade blast. However, he told
The New York Times that Maskhadov was "shell-shocked but tried to shoot
back."
FSB video footage of Maskhadov's body showed little evidence of shrapnel
wounds, while there appeared to be a bullet hole under his left eye.
Shabalkin could not be reached by telephone for clarification.
He said in a statement Wednesday that Maskhadov's three aides surrendered
without resistance after the explosion.
It was unclear why grenades rather than tear gas or sleeping gas might have
been used if the commandos wanted to take Maskhadov alive -- as
Moscow-backed Deputy Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov announced
Tuesday.
A former FSB anti-terrorism commando, Sergei Goncharov, said by telephone
that the use of such gases was standard procedure in the storming of
enclosed spaces. Goncharov, now a deputy in the Moscow City Duma, declined
to speculate, however, as to why FSB commandos might have adopted a
different strategy, citing the conflicting reports and lack of a definitive
version of events.
Spokesmen from the FSB and Chechnya's Interior Ministry refused to comment,
referring all questions to Shabalkin.
Shortly after Maskhadov's death, Kadyrov offered a curiously divergent
account of what had happened, saying Maskhadov was killed when a bodyguard
next to him "carelessly handled his gun."
In a twist, a rebel-linked web site, Ingushetiya.ru, claimed Wednesday to
have confirmed with a source close to Kadyrov that Maskhadov had actually
been killed Sunday by officers of the 5,000-member Chechen security force
that Kadyrov heads. According to the web site, Kadyrov paid a hefty sum of
money for information about Maskhadov's whereabouts, and Maskhadov died in a
gun battle that broke out during an attempt to take him into custody.
Kadyrov, however, did not want to bear the "eternal shame" of having killed
Maskhadov before the Chechen people and asked federal forces to take credit
for his death, the web site said.
It was unclear how long Maskhadov had been hiding in the bunker. He
apparently had been typing on two laptop computers, which contained his
personal files and were found in the bunker, Shabalkin said in the
statement. Investigators were examining the files Wednesday.
Shabalkin said a search of the bunker also turned up videotapes, firearms,
hand grenades, radios and a belt rigged with explosives -- a weapon commonly
used by suicide bombers.
Vendors at the Tolstoy-Yurt outdoor market told police that the owner of the
house, Yusupov, had been buying five loaves of bread, yogurt and 2 kilograms
of chocolate every day, Interfax reported.
"The vendors were puzzled why his family would need so much food," a police
official told Interfax.
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