FSB apathy makes people doubt

An investigation is under way in Tolstoy-Yurt, Chechnya, in the house where Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov was killed. It is being conducted by district police and prosecutors, while FSB (Federal Security Service) officers left Tolstoy-Yurt on the very first day. People in the village find it suspicious, they do not believe Maskhadov was killed in a special operation. Many of them are sure he was already dead when brought to Tolstoy-Yurt, NEWSru.com says.

First assumptions that Maskhadov was killed before 8 March were made yesterday. Some sources say Maskhadov died on Sunday, 6 March. A Nozhay-Yurt district resident allegedly pointed to his whereabouts for a large sum of money. A group under Ramzan Kadyrov's command went to capture Maskhadov. However, Kadyrov decided not to claim responsibility for Maskhadov's death for fear of disgrace and vengeance on the part of his relatives, so he asked federal special services to attribute the operation to other structures.

Tolstoy-Yurt residents do not believe Maskhadov really hid in the village where people have never sympathised with separatists, the Kommersant newspaper notes. The most popular version boils down to that Aslan Maskhadov was already dead when delivered to Tolstoy-Yurt.

On 8 March, FSB officers carried out "preliminary identification," but they took no interest in anything else in Tolstoy-Yurt. They next placed the three rebels who were with Maskhadov and were detained in the operation, the master of the house, Musa Yusupov, his family, and the house itself at the disposal of local law enforcement and security agencies. All personnel of the Grozny district Division of Internal Affairs and prosecutor's office went down in the exploded bunker several times during the day.

The Vremya Novostey newspaper cites an anonymous source in Chechnya saying in late 2002 Maskhadov married a young girl from Iskhoy-Yurt where he stayed to live. When federal forces planned operations there, Maskhadov knew about it and went to the forests in the Nozhay-Yurt district. Not long ago, he came to Iskhoy-Yurt because his new wife had given birth to a girl. He left the village several days ago and went to Tolstoy-Yurt, afraid that special services could capture him during the operation they conducted in Chechnya's Nozhay-Yurt, Gudermes and Kurchaloy districts. The bunker in Tolstoy-Yurt was equipped a year and a half ago. Rebels dug a separate room, resembling a usual cellar, under an outhouse adjacent to the single-storey house.

"We caught two Basayev rebels and one from a unit that obeys Maskhadov on 7 March," the paper's source says. "So it's him who told us the former president of Chechnya was in Tolstoy-Yurt. At 8 am on 8 March we sealed off the house the rebel pointed at. There were three men in the house and they surrendered in less than an hour saying there was Maskhadov hiding in the bunker. We broke the floor and saw a manhole. It was locked and the rebels told us it was also mined from inside. Security operatives tried to persuade the man in the bunker (no one was absolutely sure it was Maskhadov till the last moment) to surrender, but he simply wouldn't answer. A decision was made then to blast the manhole. When the bomb was triggered, we saw stairs leading down two metres or so. We went down and saw a usual cellar sized 2x2 metres. There was a bed and a table with a computer and several radio stations. A man was lying on the floor. The blast threw him against the wall and debris wounded the rebel in the right side of his chest and put out his right eye. The dead man was really Maskhadov."