Russia’s security service announced the death of Shamil Basayev on Monday, the country’s ”terrorist number one” and the man who was the self-confessed mastermind of the Beslan massacre.
In a victory for President Vladimir Putin ahead of his chairing a G8 summit this weekend in St Petersburg, Russian television showed pictures of burnt-out cars and a truck in the southern republic of Ingushetia, which neighbours Basayev’s native Chechnya. He and 12 other militants were killed in a blast that destroyed the vehicles, apparently caused by an assault early on Monday morning by the security services. His body was reportedly disfigured in the blast but was identified by some of its parts.
The 41-year-old, who lost a foot during the second Chechen war in 2000, frequently appeared in internet broadcasts and statements to haunt the Kremlin. His repeated evasion of the security services in the north Caucasus became embarrassing to Moscow and an indication of how weak its control over that region was.
Nikolai Patrushev, the head of the Russian security service, the FSB, told Putin in televised comments that Basayev had been killed during an overnight operation in Ingushetia. The Kremlin put a $11-million bounty on his head after Beslan, which ended with the deaths of 331 people in a series of blasts and a bungled siege by the Russian military.
Putin said the death was payback for a decade of attacks on civilians, beginning with another hostage crisis in Budyonnovsk in 1995. ”This is retaliation he deserves for killing our children in Beslan, Budyonnovsk, all the terrorist acts his bandits perpetrated in Moscow and other regions of Russia”. He said the FSB agents involved in the attack should receive awards.
Patrushev said the militants had ”plotted a terrorist attack in Ingushetia in an attempt to put pressure on the leadership of Russia during the period when the G8 summit is due to take place.” He declined to give further details about the attack, but said: ”The creation of an operational network, particularly in countries where weapons were collected and sent to militants in Russia” had aided the FSB in tracking Basayev down.
An FSB spokesperson, Nikolai Zakharov, said: ”Basayev was killed with 12 other militants. It was a special operation by our guys. It happened early on Monday morning in the village of Ekazhevo in the region of Nazran [the Ingush capital]”.
Zakharov said two other militants had been identified as Tarkhan Ganzhiev and Issa Khushtov, who were members of an armed group that attacked Ingushetia, killing at least 100 police and officials in June 2004. A third militant was identified as Ali Taziev, a high-profile fighter known as Magas who masterminded the June attack.
Zakharov declined to go into detail about what the militants were planning, but added: ”They were preparing a terror attack for the eve of the G8.”
Basayev’s death came in advance of the international summit of world leaders, which Russia’s critics have said the country is unfit to host. Dmitri Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, said: ”It is a great success for the Russian special services, as they succeeded in killing a terrorist whose hands bore the blood of many people, including children.” He said the timing was not connected to the G8.
”It’s a difficult task, and the Russian special services don’t orientate such work around such events,” he said. There were conflicting reports on Monday night as to whether Basayev had been in the truck laden with up to 100kg of explosives that blew up, or in a car travelling alongside it. Russian sappers defused 40 undetonated rocket shells at the site of the blast.
But Akhmed Zakayev, a Chechen separatist envoy who lives in London, where he has political asylum, suggested that the death may have been an accident. ”I do not believe there was some operation carried out by Patrushev and his colleagues. I think this was a fatal accident,” he told Reuters. The website kavkaz.org.uk, linked to separatists, quoted a separatist military source as saying: ”There was no special operation. Shamil and other of our brothers became martyrs.” They claimed the truck had blown up accidentally.
Russia’s state-run First Channel said it may have been hit by missile strike.
Ingushetia’s Deputy Prime Minister, Bashir Aushev, said: ”As far as I know, [Basayev] was identified by the head. All his characteristic features are there.”
The pro-Russian President of Chechnya, Alu Alkhanov, said the death marked ”the logical end of the tough struggle against illegal paramilitary formations”.
But analysts say a power struggle being waged inside Chechnya is not between Moscow’s forces and extremists but between Chechen militants hired by Moscow to keep a tight grip on the republic. – Guardian Unlimited Â