Posted on 03/04/2005 9:37:06 PM PST by Straight Vermonter
ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia (AP) - Authorities killed five people and arrested four others suspected of helping stage the hostage-taking raid on a southern Russian school last September, prosecutors said Friday.
Officials believe the arrested were involved in the Sept. 1-3 attack on School No. 1 in the North Ossetia region town of Beslan "at the stage of its preparation," Deputy Prosecutor General Nikolai Shepel said. The siege ended in gunfire and explosions; about half of the more than 330 people killed were children.
Five other suspects were killed while resisting arrest, Shepel said in a statement. It did not say when or where the raid took place.
Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev has claimed responsibility for the school seizure, in which officials say 32 people took part. They say 31 were killed and one detained.
Anger has grown over the slow pace of the investigation, particularly among residents of Beslan. Many suspect authorities are hiding information about the attackers and how they were so easily able to slip into town with a huge quantity of weapons.
In January, Shepel said that seven suspected accomplices of the attackers had been killed in special operations, two others arrested, and six put on a wanted list. The head of a parliamentary commission investigating the attack later said that among the two suspected accomplices in custody and three being sought were law enforcement officials with ranks higher than major.
Shepel said that the suspects arrested in the latest raid were also accused of involvement in a deadly attack last June on police facilities in Ingushetia, which lies between North Ossetia and Chechnya.
He added that a suspected al-Qaida liaison in Chechnya, Abu Dzeit, a Saudi national who died in a Russian security sweep last month, was a key organizer of the school seizure and other terror attacks.
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A police officer was arrested and charged with negligence after he released the two women suspected of carrying bombs onto the planes without inspecting their belongings. A ticket scalper and an airline employee accused of helping a woman get on a plane were also arrested.
I suspect that most people the Russian government kills in the near future will have 'been involved' in Beslan. But as long as the dead are shady Muslims I'm cool with it.
That is true of lots of countries like Syrai, Egypt etc. Lock 'em up or kill 'em and if you call them terrorists no one gets too excited. That is why we have to be really careful in cases like Jose Padilla's.
Beslan was a BIG operation, though, and there are sure to be lots of people out there that really were involved.
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