(((In case you're having trouble over definitions
of "terrorism," here's a reminder of what terrorism looks
like when it's working.)))
RUSSIAN TOWN MARKS 10TH ANNIVERSARY OF TERRORIST RAID
By Robert Coalson
The Stavropol Krai town of Budennovsk today marked the 10th
anniversary of a 1995 raid on the town by Chechen fighters led by
radical field commander Shamil Basaev, RFE/RL's Russian Service
reported.
According to official figures, the fighters held more than
1,800 people hostage for six days; 147 people were killed in the
incident and more than 400 were wounded, while about 160 buildings in the town were destroyed or damaged.
The anniversary was marked with prayer services on 12 June
and by a demonstration by young people in the center of town under
the slogan, "We remember." Stavropol Krai Governor Aleksandr
Chernogorov attended a 14 June demonstration in the town, and moments of silence were observed in towns throughout Stavropol Krai and the North Caucasus, RIA-Novosti reported.
At shortly after noon on 14 June 1995, Basaev and a group of
some 195 Chechen fighters entered the town in a convoy of trucks that had penetrated Russia disguised as a transport of coffins of Russian military personnel. (((It's this kind of whimsy that
gets Basaev the handle of "Field Commander Basaev"
instead of, say, "Jeff 'Free' Basaev.)))
After a six-day standoff with the Russian
authorities, then Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin negotiated an
agreement under which the Chechens released their hostages in
exchange for safe conduct back to Chechnya.
According to the Prosecutor-General's Office on 14 June,
about 30 of the fighters have been killed since the hostage taking;
20 have been tried, convicted, and sentenced to prison for their
involvement; and 40 remain on the federal wanted list, RIA-Novosti
reported. Basaev continues to play a leading role in the fighting in
Chechnya and has claimed responsibility for such major terrorist
incidents as the 2002 hostage taking at a Moscow theater and the 2004 hostage taking at a school in the North Ossetian town of Beslan.
(((That was the episode in which they denied schoolchildren
water for days and then shot them wholesale.)))
Audit Chamber Chairman Sergei Stepashin – who at the time of the hostage taking was director of the Federal Counterintelligence
Service, but was fired from that post a few weeks later – told
Channel One on 13 June that Basaev's raiders originally intended to
travel to Mineralnye Vody and seize an airplane, with which they
intended to complete a suicide raid on the Kremlin analogous to the
11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C.
(((I bet you imagine Stepashin is making that up. I doubt
that he is.)))
Stepashin said Basaev "got frightened," (((uh, not really))) changed his plan, and seized the Budennovsk hospital instead. Basaev, however, gave an alternative explanation at the time why he and his men proceeded no further than Budennovsk, claiming that they had bribed their way through every traffic police check en route at a cost of $70,000 and simply ran out of cash.
The separatist Chechen website chechenpress.com on 14 June
hailed the "successful" Budennovsk operation as having "forced the
Russian authorities to heed the Chechen resistance and to begin the
process of peacefully regulating the Russian-Chechen conflict of
1994-96."
