School massacre mastermind 'planning more attacks'

The Chechen rebel leader who organised last year’s deadly hostage-taking attack on a Russian school admitted he was a terrorist and warned that he was planning more attacks, possibly a similar atrocity.

Shamil Basayev, linked to a dozen deadly attacks on civilians, also said he was plotting more. “I’m making plans. We’re always looking for new ways,” he said on ABC News’ Nightline programme.

The Kremlin condemned the network’s decision to run the interview, which was conducted by well-known Russian journalist Andrei Babitsky.

The interview “runs counter to the spirit of Russian-American partnership in our joint fight against the global threat of terrorism”, said the Russian statement, also broadcast by Nightline.

Basayev, who has an €8m bounty on his head and rarely speaks to journalists, was interviewed in his Chechen hideout by Babitsky, who said the rebels lived in primitive conditions, eating mainly “instant soups and canned food” and slept on barren ground.

Despite the hardships, Basayev struck a defiant note. “The Chechen people are more dear to me than the rest of the world. You get that?” he said.

“I admit, I’m a bad guy, a bandit, a terrorist … but what would you call them?” he said of the Russians. “If they are the keepers of constitutional order, if they are anti-terrorists, then I spit on all these agreements and nice words.”

Basayev claimed responsibility for the 2004 school attack in which gunmen held more than 1,000 hostages for nearly three days in the Russian town of Beslan. The raid ended in gunfire and explosions, killing more 330 people, mostly children.

“It’s not the children who are responsible,” Basayev said. But he added: “Responsibility is with the whole Russian nation… If the war doesn’t come to each of them individually, it will never stop in Chechnya.”

Asked if a Belsan-type attack could occur again, Basayev said: “Of course … As long as the genocide of the Chechen nation continues, as long as this mess continues, anything can happen.”

The Kremlin sent troops into Chechnya in 1994 to crush its separatist leadership, but they withdrew after a devastating 20-month war that left the region de facto independent. Russian forces returned in 1999 afer blaming rebels for a string of apartment buildig blasts that killed about 300 people.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch accused Russian forces of “a crime against humanity” in March, noting local human rights groups estimate up to 5,000 people have gone missing in Chechnya since 1999.

Among other attacks, Basayev has been linked to a 2002 hostage-taking assault on a Moscow theatre that left 170 people dead, a 2003 suicide attack in the Moscow tube network that killed 41 people, and a 2003 double suicide bombing at a Moscow rock concert that killed 17 people.

“I see no other way to stop the genocide of the Chechen people,” Basayev said in the interview. “And I’ll pull no punches to stop this genocide.”

Babitsky has focused on human rights abuses by Russian troops in previous reports from Chechnya. Russian authorities accuse him of being a Chechen sympathiser.