RUSSIAN prosecutors pinned the blame on Sunday for a bomb attack that killed 42 people in Dagestan last week on pro-Chechen rebels trained at terrorist camps stretching from Georgia’s notorious Pankisi gorge to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Deputy prosecutor general Vladimir Kolesnikov said the ”utterly monstrous” bombing in the town of Kaspiysk was ”another link in a chain” connected to the murder of seven Russian troops and a top Dagestan politician in January.
”The terrorists who carried out these crimes underwent training in Chechnya, Georgia’s Pankisi gorge, Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Kolesnikov was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti.
He added that it was the authorities’ duty ”to show people the true face of the rebels.”
Russia has repeatedly linked its 31-month war against Chechen separatists to the international fight against terrorism following the September 11 attacks on the United States.
However, the presence in Chechnya, or even neighbouring Georgia, of al-Qaida fighters linked to Saudi extremist Osama bin Laden has yet to be established beyond doubt.
The United States has recently sent to Georgia the first batch of 200 troops to train local security forces hunting al-Qaida rebels in the former Soviet republic’s remote Pankisi gorge, which borders Chechnya.
Meanwhile Russian President Vladimir Putin has seized on public outrage at the Dagestan bombing to warn of an even tougher crackdown on ”Nazi-like scum” and terrorists, the Kremlin usual word for the Chechen rebels.
Putin told German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in a phone conversation Sunday that he attached ”great moral and political importance to the solidarity shown by the leaders of most countries” in the war against terrorism.
Schroeder had telephoned the Kremlin boss to offer his condolences for the Dagestan attack, which killed 17 children as well as at least 18 Russian marines, and which has been condemned as an ”evil act” by US President George Bush among other world leaders.
Kolesnikov said Russian security forces had detained around 40 suspects in Dagestan in connection with a string of terrorist attacks in the republic, including last week’s deadly bombing, the NTV television channel reported. – Sapa-AFP
Ethiopian, Saudi beheaded for bloody murder
A SAUDI woman and an Ethiopian man convicted of separate bloody and premeditated murders were beheaded by the sword Sunday in the southern province of Assir, the interior ministry said.
The woman, Zainah Saeed Mohammad Abkah al-Qahtani was convicted of killing her own father while asleep by covering his head with a piece of cloth and then hitting him on the head with a rock until he died, the ministry said in a statement.
The statement did not say why the woman killed her father. The ministry added that Ethiopian Watio Bajd Quwa Farzeez was convicted of killing his compatriot Idrees bin Sultan by hitting him on the head several times with an axe while he was sleeping.
The beheadings took to 18 the number of executions in Saudi Arabia this year, according to interior ministry statements.
The kingdom applies a strict form of sharia, or Islamic law, imposing the death penalty for murder, rape, apostasy, armed robbery, drug trafficking and repeated drug use. In 2001, at least 81 people were executed. – Sapa-AFP