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Russia identifies hostage-taking suspects
MOSCOW, Nov. 24 (UPI) -- Russian law enforcement officials Sunday disclosed the identities of the three men being held in connection with the Oct. 23-26 hostage incident at a Moscow theater that left over 130 people dead, the Interfax news agency reported.
The captives were also suspected of being behind last month's car-bomb blast near a McDonald's restaurant in southwest Moscow that killed one person and wounded seven others.
The two suspects -- 30-year-old ethnic Chechen Khampash Sobraliyev and a Kazakhstan native Arman Menkeyev, 39 -- were captured Friday in the village of Chernoye in the Balashikha district of the Moscow region.
The third suspect, 36-year-old Yuri Yankovsky, a resident of Orekhovo-Zuyevo outside Moscow, was captured in an apartment in western Moscow the same day.
All three will remain in custody for at least 10 days pending the filing of official charges.
According to unnamed law enforcement sources, the men were suspected of organizing the October raid on a theater in central Moscow by 41 Chechen commandos that took more than 850 theatergoers and actors hostage.
The raid ended in a draconian and dramatic fashion after 58 hours when elite Russian security forces pumped an incapacitating gas into the building and then moved in, killing the entire terrorist group, including 18 female suicide bombers; however, a large number of hostages succumbed after inhaling the gas.
The notorious Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, who claimed responsibility for masterminding the raid, reiterated his threats against Russia on Sunday in an open letter to NATO, the Organization for Security Co-operation in Europe, and to leaders of Western democracies, seeking their assistance in order to force the Russian troops' withdrawal from Chechnya.
In the letter, quoted by the German newspaper Welt Am Sonntag and other Western European media, the warlord demanded the creation of a 100-kilometer (62 mile) demilitarized zone around Chechnya following pullout of the Russian troops, as well as the release of all Chechens currently held in detention centers throughout the province. Basayev also asked Western leaders to step up their pressure on Russia to comply with their demands. Otherwise, he added, the rebels would continue their campaign of terror.
"We are warning (Russia): We regard all military, economic and strategic structures as our legitimate military targets," threatened Basayev.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's special envoy on human rights in Chechnya reacted immediately, calling the letter an "ultimatum" and condemning its contents.
In an interview with Ekho Moskvy radio, Abdul-Khakim Sultygov, an ethnic Chechen himself, called on Russia's western partners to join Moscow in the fight against Chechen terrorism.
Chechen police commander Maj. Gen. Said-Selim Peshkhoyev, dismissed the threat, saying, "Basayev and his guerrillas are not able to carry out large-scale terrorist acts."
Usman Ferzauli, a self-styled leader of pro-independence Chechnya's representation office in Copenhagen, distanced himself Sunday from Basayev's words, which he said were in no way related to the province's bid for independence led by former Chechen leader-turned-rebel Aslan Maskhadov.
"We have voiced our attitude (on the issue) a number of times before and I am repeating our stance once more," Ferzauli told Ekho Moskvy in a telephone interview from Denmark.
"You can't gain anything with threats and terrorist acts. Unfortunately, the actions of the Russian side in Chechnya force (the rebels) to take similar measures and make similar threats," he said.
Meanwhile, the spat over Denmark's hosting of a forum on Chechen human rights issues and its refusal to extradite a top Maskhadov envoy to Moscow threatened to worsen bilateral ties further as Moscow reportedly stalled its borders' Customs' clearance of Danish exports to Russia.
On Sunday, a Danish industrial giant, the Danfoss Group, halted exports to Russia after Russian Customs did not clear their trucks.
Russia's former chairman of the State Customs Committee, Valery Draganov, described the actions of the Customs service as a "serious mistake," saying that a "Customs war (between the two countries) is intolerable."
Draganov, currently a deputy in the State Duma, added that he believed Customs hadn't received any instructions from Russia's government to stall the clearance of Danish goods and called the incident a "series of coincidences, or perhaps the irresponsibility of the junior rank Customs officials."
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