Russia fired the first salvo of its response to the attack on the school in Beslan on Wednesday by saying that it reserved the right to make pre-emptive strikes against terrorist training camps outside the Russian Federation’s borders.
At the same time the security services put a $10-million bounty on the heads of the two Chechen leaders it claims are behind the Beslan massacre, Shamil Basayev and Aslan Maskhadov.
The two moves came as a senior Russian security officer said that they had ”precise information” that the Beslan attack had been ”ordered and manipulated from Islamist circles in the Middle East”, specifically against the opening day of a school. He declined to give further details.
The official said Russia’s two most wanted men — militant commander Basayev and former Chechen president Maskhadov — had been to Turkey within the last year.
The chief of the Russian general staff, Colonel General Yuri Baluyevsky, said: ”As for carrying out preventive strikes against terrorist bases, we will take all measures to liquidate terrorist bases in any region of the world.”
Moscow has previously threatened to attack ”terrorists” in the region but has not before had enough international backing to do so. Militants are regularly accused of sheltering and training in the Pankisi Gorge, part of Georgian territory on the border between Chechnya and Russia, and the press regularly reports militant activity and training in neighbouring Azerbaijan.
Moscow’s decision to offer huge financial rewards for information leading to the death of Basayev and Maskhadov is unprecedented and mirrors US attempts to capture or kill al-Qaeda members.
The whereabouts of the two men is unknown, but Akhmed Zakayev, a spokesperson for Maskhadov currently living under political asylum in London, said on Wednesday that he feared being targeted by the Russian intelligence services.
Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, another Chechen militant, was assassinated, allegedly by Russian agents, in Doha in February in response to an attack on the Moscow metro. Zakayev told Reuters: ”I do not exclude that what they did in Qatar, they could try to do in any European country.”
Analysts said the move was the latest in a series of attempts to tar Maskhadov with the same militant extremist brush as Basayev. Maskhadov, a former Soviet general, was elected president of a briefly independent Chechnya in 1997 and enjoyed a short period as an international statesman.
Basayev has shunned politics in favour of mass hostage taking and terrorism. He has been blacklisted by the UN for his alleged links to al-Qaeda. The ties between the two men have led Maskhadov to fall out of favour with the US, which once saw him as the key to a negotiated settlement in Chechnya.
A senior official at the Russian security service, the FSB, said Maskhadov and Basayev ”cannot stand each other. But cooperation in their fight brings them closer together. You know when wolves are suffering in winter from the frost and hunger, they form a pack. In reality, it is Basayev who has influence while Maskhadov does not.”
He said Maskhadov was being used to lend a presentable face for the west to Islamic terrorists, and his well-known personality was used to draw funds from ”Islamic circles”.
He said the pair had ”been in Turkey several times, especially during the winter period, both last and this year”. The Turkish embassy in Moscow was not available for comment.
Basayev was last seen in Ingushetia in June, when hundreds of militants invaded the republic and killed 57 policemen. A militant website carried a film of him purportedly inside a police building there. The FSB official said it was likely Basayev was involved in the raid, which was led by Magomed Yevloyev, the alleged leader of the Beslan militants. Russia’s military said more than a month ago that they had killed Yevloyev after the Ingushetian raids.
Public discontent in Beslan grew on Wednesday, with 3 500 protesters gathering outside the North Ossetian government headquarters. President Alexander Dzasokhov promised to sack his government within two days because of its incompetent handling of the siege. – Guardian Unlimited Â