Warlord claims security services opened way for Beslan attackers

Radical Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev today claimed in an internet posting that Russian security services bore responsibility for last year’s bloody Beslan school siege by allegedly providing the attackers a safe corridor through the region in an attempt to trap them.

In the statement, posted on the KavkazCentre web site today, Basayev said a Russian double agent had been among the hostage-takers. He also claimed a second attacker had survived the three-day siege and was now with Basayev’s men and prepared to testify.

Russian prosecutors, however, say all but one of the 32 attackers were killed. The sole survivor is currently on trial.

Deputy Russian Prosecutor General Nikolai Shepel, who is presenting the state’s case at the trial, dismissed Basayev’s claims and said investigators had no evidence of involvement by the special services.

“The assertions of this terrorist and child-murderer are total nonsense,” he was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

Basayev’s statement came on the eve of the first anniversary of the Beslan tragedy, in which some 330 victims, more than half of them children, were killed.

The masked, heavily-armed militants seized about 1,200 hostages who had come to a school in the small southern town to celebrate Knowledge Day – the first day of school.

The attackers herded their victims into the school gymnasium and laced the soon-sweltering hall with an intricate network of bombs they threatened to detonate. Over the next two days, they mocked the captives, refusing them any food or water and letting only a few infants and toddlers and their mothers go.

Shortly after noon on the third day, a series of explosions and shooting erupted in a series of events that authorities and witnesses still have trouble explaining.

Prosecutors say one of the attackers’ bombs detonated accidentally, while the surviving attacker on trial, Nur-Pashi Kulayev, has testified that a sniper shot one of the men minding a bomb.

Basayev alleged that the security services stormed the building after a mediator, businessman Mikhail Gutseriyev, had tricked the hostage-takers into allowing a group purportedly from the Emergency Situations Ministry to enter the building to remove bodies.

Hundreds of people were wounded as they fled the building through shattered windows and bomb-blasted walls; those who could not escape were shot dead, mortally wounded by the bombs, or burned by the fires that broke out.

Basayev said that top security officials in north Ossetia, the region where the attack occurred, had opened a safe route beginning on August 31, 2004, – the day before the Beslan siege began – for rebels to reach the regional capital, Vladikavkaz.

The alleged double agent was supposed to have gained Basayev’s confidence and then lead his men into a trap as they were en route to seize regional government buildings in Vladikavkaz on September 6.

Instead, as they were supposed to be performing reconnaissance, the militants seized the school, Basayev said. Their demands were for Russian troops to withdraw from Chechnya or for Russian President Vladimir Putin to resign, Basayev said.