Posted on 09/06/2004 7:04:00 PM PDT by Kaslin
MOSCOW - Militants appear to have planned their seizure of a Russian school carefully, starting months earlier and sneaking weapons into the building in advance. Still, some of the raiders may not have known what they were getting into and were appalled to find they were holding children hostage.
Some of the objecting militants were killed by their own comrades, the lawyer for a captured militant told The Associated Press.
Pieces of the picture of how militants took more than 1,000 hostages at the school in Beslan were falling into place, mainly from news reports citing unspecified but presumably official sources. Officials are saying little publicly — Federal Security Service spokesman Sergei Ignatchenko declined to immediately respond to questions from The Associated Press on Monday.
But the reports portray the raid as a fastidiously prepared operation — in which militants used renovation work as a cover to plant arms and explosives in the school — almost literally under authorities' noses.
School No. 1 in Beslan, which the militants seized Wednesday on the first day of the new school year, is only about 200 yards from the local police department headquarters.
"Why the law-enforcement bodies didn't know and why they allowed a column of fighters to get into the city past all checkpoints — this is something that can be judged only through rumors," the newspaper Novye Izvestia said Monday.
The band of hostage-takers — some reports have said there were over 30 — were demanding independence for Chechnya (news - web sites) and were a mix of ethnicities, including Chechens and up to 10 Arabs, according to Russian officials.
After the hostage-taking ended Friday in a frenzy of shooting and explosions, Russian news agencies cited unnamed security sources as saying that the planners of the raid were believed to have scouted at least two schools in Beslan.
"Judging by everything, they felt the better one for their goals was the main building of School No. 1 with its half-basement gymnasium annex, where the floor had to be replaced," the ITAR-Tass news agency quoted a law-enforcement official as saying.
"The bandits were able to bring into the school a large quantity of weapons, ammunition, equipment and explosives, under the guise of planks, cement and other building material, enough to defend the seized place for a long period," the official said.
Regional security service head Valery Andreyev appeared to reluctantly agree. "The special services are carefully checking the version that the terrorists brought in arms, explosives and ammunition ahead of time," he said, according to the Interfax news agency.
That hypothesis appears to conform with other details of the seizure. The approximately 30 raiders arrived in a single military-style truck — believed to have been hijacked in neighboring Ingushetia — which, jammed with people, would have been too small to carry much equipment.
Hostages also spoke in news accounts of a huge quantity of explosives in the school — not only the suicide belts worn by some of the hostage-takers, but bombs hung from basketball hoops and a 2-foot-square bomb built in the center of the gym.
Such a plan echoes some of the recent years' most brazen terrorist attacks. The Kremlin-backed president of Chechnya, Akhmad Kadyrov, was killed in May by a bomb in a stadium in Chechnya's capital that was believed to have been planted during reconstruction work. The huge bombs brandished by the raiders who seized a Moscow theater in 2002 were believed to have been spirited in while an office in the building was being remodeled.
The Moscow theater standoff ended when Russian forces pumped in a knockout gas that disabled the militants — and inadvertently killed most of the 129 civilian victims. Perhaps learning from that experience, the Beslan hostage-takers brought along two dogs, possibly to detect gas.
Why the militantsscouted Beslan at all was not immediately clear. The city of 30,000 could have been seen as large enough to provide a shockingly high number of victims while not large enough to risk a heavy police presence. It also is the location of the region's main airport and is on a railway line.
But amid the careful preparations, the attack's planners may not have considered psychology.
Umar Sikoyev, a lawyer for a captured militant identified as Nur-Pashi Kulayev, said the band's leader did not tell them what their mission was and that after the seizure a fierce argument broke out in the band, with several objecting that taking children hostage was wrong.
The raid's commander shot the dissidents' leader to death and then detonated the suicide belts worn by two women raiders by remote control to establish order in the band, Sikoyev told The Associated Press.
(LEADS with three grafs to UPDATE with lawyer of captured militant saying dissenting militants were killed; corrects spelling of Beslan; picks up 4th graf 'But the reports ...' SUBS final two grafs bgng 'Umar Sikoyev, a ...' to ADD lawyer's comments.)
Well that is some new and interesting info. Who was the raid's commander I wonder? And of which nationality? I hope we can find this out soon.
I wouldn't be surprised. Speculation was that only 1 or 2 of the hijackers on 9/11 knew the real mission was to crash the planes into buildings. Apparently there are no shortage of willing dupes in the militant Muslim movement.
band... raid... What am I missing? Is the raid's commander a Chechen or one of the Russian military? The story needs clarity.
I submit both clowns in the cockpit of each of the 4 planes had to know because 1 of them might have tried to steer away from the target and we wouldn't have seem a smooth approach.
Pennsylvania will always remain a mystery, but in NYC and the Pentagon, those 3 planes hit what they intended to ... that tells me neither of the pilots was fighting the other one at the last minute when it became clear what was going on ...
the pilots had to know ... as for the clowns in the rear, they may have been surprised, especially when they found out who allah really was.
When you attack a Russian school on the opening day, you get parents, their children, teachers and local dignitaries. The terrorists knew children were going to be part of the hostage group. They wanted to make a maximum impact and the children being killed were part of the plan.
Yeah, sure. They raided a school and were shocked--shocked!--to find children inside. Get serious.
Many Chechen are former Soviet soldiers. Some were officers.
I can't believe they let that mutt "lawyer up" so soon!
Russia's horrific hostage event was long planned. So was 911. 911 was planned as far back as 1996. Both countries suffered horribly and tragically at the hands of the islamic fanatics. The countries should put together an international hit squad and not rest until these murdering bastards are killed (hopefully slowly and mercilessly).
No, that's not what I'm asking. Was the guy shot by one of their own or from the forces outside the building?
One of his own...they had terror family problems
Even though 9/11 has been planned since 1996 the leftwingers are still blaming the president for the attck and are saying it happened on his watch. It makes me so sick to hear that
oh I am sure the terrorist pilots knew what the plan was before they even went on the planes
Later
Disturbing, but not surprising. The way the terrorist attack was carried out was well coordinated and planned.
Some of the objecting militants were killed by their own comrades, the lawyer for a captured militant told The Associated Press.
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Onward Muslime Soldiers - ping.
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If you don't think there are Islamic cells right here in the United Staes of America who have planned for months (or years) for a Beslan-type hostage jihad right here on American soil - then I've got a bridge to sell you in Fallujah, Iraq.
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