Posted on 05/09/2002 10:57:27 PM PDT by Spar
U.S. Calls Bomb Blast in Russia an 'Atrocity'
Thu May 9, 5:10 PM ET
By Elaine Monaghan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States condemned as an "atrocity" a blast near the Russian region of Chechnya (news - web sites) on Thursday that killed at least 34 people, including 12 children, saying it looked like terrorism but declining to blame the attack on Chechen separatist guerrillas.
"We were saddened to learn of the bomb blast," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told a news briefing after the attack that also injured more than 150 people and scattered bodies where a Russian Victory Day parade had been taking place.
"Many of the victims were elderly and were children. Our sincere condolences go out to the Russian people and the victims' families," he said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites) blamed the attack in the Caspian Sea port of Kaspiisk on "terrorists," the usual Kremlin term to describe separatist Chechen rebels.
Boucher drew no link with Moscow's battle in the north Caucasus region of Chechnya, the scene of two conflicts between separatists and Russian forces since the 1990s and bordering the region of Dagestan where the blast occurred.
"We strongly condemn this cowardly and violent act. We look forward to seeing the perpetrators of these attacks brought to justice," Boucher said.
"I don't think at this point we have a sense of who's responsible for committing this atrocity. I have to say it looks like terrorism plain and simple, and the first issue therefore is to find, identify and punish the perpetrators," he added.
Boucher said U.S. views on Chechnya, which are that Moscow should seek a political settlement to the conflict and that there is no military solution, were unchanged.
U.S.-Russian relations have flourished since attacks by Islamic militant followers of Saudi exile Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon (news - web sites) near Washington on Sept. 11 that killed about 3,000 people.
President Bush (news - web sites) is due to visit Russia this month for summit talks with Putin.
Both men have made fighting terrorism a hallmark of their presidencies. Putin has emphasized alleged links between some of the Chechen guerrillas and bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
The State Department revived references to the alleged connections after Sept. 11 in an apparent reward to Putin, the first foreign leader to reach Bush after the U.S. attacks.
Putin, drawing parallels with his people's suffering in a series of apartment-building bombings that Moscow blamed on Chechens, announced an interest in political talks shortly afterward, although they have come to nothing.
Concerned by the scale of Russia's campaigns in which thousands of civilians have been killed and the Chechen capital, Grozny, virtually reduced to rubble, Washington has tried to encourage Putin to differentiate between terrorism and Chechens who seek independence for their mountainous, mainly Muslim region.
Not if loud public calls have been made to release them. Because there are questions as to whether or not the secret service was reponsible for a terrorist attack that killed around 300 innocent civilians.
By the way clueless, ask yourself this, why were so many Chechins killed in Afghanistan? Why are there Chechin prisoners in Camp X-Ray? Why were Arabs like Kattab operating with Saudi and Bin Ladin support in Chechnya....oh those hard questions that liberals love to avoid.
Because Osama Bin Laden was training Shariah muslims in Afghanistan to fight the Russians in Chechnya. But that doesn't mean that the majority of Chechen civilians agreed with the invasion of Dagestan which facilitated the current Chechen war. Nor does it mean that they agreed with the Shariah muslims' expansionist ambitions.
The arabs have always backed the Mujahideen and al-Qaeda against Russia. Because Russia invaded Afghanistan in 1979, killed 3 million Afghan civilians and turned the country into a rubbish tip, in the space of their ten year occupation.
The Russian Government has seized on the existence and the activities of these militant Shariah muslim extremists, as an excuse to subjugate the entire Chechen population. Do you believe, like many of your contemporaries, that the people of Chechnya deserve to be exterminated?
He does seem to be very concerned with maintaining a large and powerful Military, for a country which only has a GNP equivalent to that of Belgium! Perhaps, he should cut his Military down to 200,000 professionals, they could still defend Russia and save money at the same time. Russia would still have a large nuclear arsenal to deter anyone from invading. They could spend the money they save on hospitals, orphanages, schools and public transport etc.
If any uppish generals go for a coup, he could have them liquidated, he spent 15 years in the KGB after all.
However, he would have to make peace with the Chechens and he couldn't do that because that would be a betrayal of his 'strong man' image, which he was careful to portray during the elections.
You make attacks on Russia but avoid answering the questions of Chechin terrorist participation that are now proven facts...very Berkly of you.
I addressed the link between the Shariah muslim militants and al-Qaeda in my post above. I am sure that Chechen rebels have been responsible for some terrible terrorist incidents. But the IRA were also responsible for similar atrocities and the only way Britain got any peace from them was through a political solution.
Russians tried the political settlement, they withdrew their troops and gave Chechens freedom to rule themselves. As a result the Saudies and West supported Wahhabi invasion which resulted in slave markets, takovers of hospitals, numerous beheadings, bloody bombings and the last straw - invasion of Dagestan. It is much harder to promote Caucasian version of KLA since Russia is bigger and stronger than Serbia, but will it stop humanitarian instigators?
It takes more then nukes to defend a country, look at Isreal. 400 nukes are not enough to stop Islamics from attacking.
The Islamics in Chechnya had 3 years of independence, during which time they imported Taliban/Al Quida, instituted Shaire, exported heroine, terror, prostitution, and kidnapped and tortured 1,500 people, including quite a few Americans and Brits...all the while wiping out Orthodox and other Christian groups.
But all of these are inconvinient details in your cospiracy theories.
Why Russians would plant all those bombings (and other atrocities) against themselves to make Chechens look bad, if Chechens did not cause them problems by commiting numerous terrorist and criminal acts?
If Chechens were peaceful (or rather if they were not taken over by Saudi Wahhabis) they could govern themselves as many other autonomous regions in Russian Federation and Russians would not have this headache.
Also are you suggesting that American and Israeli governments also plant the terrorist acts against themselves to make somone else look bad?
No I am not out to exterminate the Chechins, mass convert them...yes, exterminate no. But please, once more, avoid the reason why most Chechins choose to live in other parts of Russia and not in the enlightened regimes of other Islamics.
< SARCASM >
They were sent there by FSB to make Chechens look bad.
FBI arranged all Mafia killings to justify prosecution of Mafia.
< /SARCASM >
Only for some? If Chechen (or rather Wahhabi extremists) are so peaceful why Russians bother about them? They could leave them alone as it was done before Chechen invasion of Dagestan. Or are you saying that this invasion was also a police provocation?
Really, Russia has stopped doing that sort of thing has it? Then please explain the following cases of arbitrary arrests and torture to me:
'The FSB brought espionage charges against academic Valentin Danilov, head of the Thermo-Physics Center at a University in Krasnoyarsk. Following the scientist's arrest on February 16, the FSB charged Danilov with passing to a Chinese company state secrets relating to satellite technology. In an open letter to the procuracy, twenty of Danilov's colleagues maintained the information had been declassified in 1992. One of Mr Danilov's colleagues said "There is really nothing at all secret about the work. Virtually all his research has long been in the public domain." Danilov's trial was expected to start in late 2001.'
The following article is also available at: http://prava.org/similar/danilov.htm
'On February 16, 2001, Valentin Danilov was arrested for allegedly selling top secret satellite information to a Chinese export-import company. Danilov maintains the information he provided had already been published in scientific journals. While detained, Danilov suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized. Despite failing health, the court refused to release him on bail and did not see a reason to alter their "preventative restraint measures." He faces charges of high treason and fraud in a closed trial, which began on October 9. His health continues to decline.
On December 17, the Krasnoya region court ruled that Danilov could receive hospital treatment as recommended by his doctors. It is not known if treatment will occur in a civilian or a prison hospital.
On February 5th, 2002, Danilov was too sick to attend his trial, which was postponed until the next day. Danilov was suffering from a high fever and flu-like symptoms. Although Danilov was absent, on February 6th, the Court decided to allow the trial to be further postponed so that the prosecution had more time to conduct its investigation.'
Note the following quote from: http://www.nyas.org/humanrights/
'In fact, not only was Dr. Danilov representing Krasnoyarsk Technical University when he contracted with the Chinese company but also Russian authorities did not raise objectives during its signing nor for six months after, until his arrest on February 16, 2001. Dr. Danilov’s research was declassified in 1992, at which time the state stopped financing his research. Researchers in the United States and Russia with whom Dr. Danilov has collaborated indicate that the information provided under this contract has been available in open, scientific literature for years.'
Here is another revealing case:
'The trial of Igor Sutyagin, a security and arms control researcher at the U.S.A. and Canada Institute, continued. The FSB arrested Sutyagin in 1999, charging him with passing state secrets to two employees of a British consultancy firm. However, according to his lawyers, Sutyagin never had access to classified materials and had only collated materials available in the public domain.'
I suppose you are aware of the fact that 99.6% of people brought before the Russian courts in 1999 were found guilty and half of the 0.4% found not guilty were convicted on appeal. Out of every 100,000 Russians some 750 are in prison, compared to 120 in Britain.
Also a large proportion of the people who are arrested in Russia are tortured in some way to force them to sign confessions, so even innocent people can be charged with something. Here is another quote:
'According to Human Rights Watch research conducted in 1998 in three of Russia’s regions, torture occurred mostly in the early hours of detention when police isolated suspects from family and attorneys. Police forcibly extracted confessions using beatings, asphyxiation, electroshock, and other forms of physical and psychological violence. Demands for a lawyer were routinely refused and often resulted in more violence.
Torture victims who confessed faced almost insurmountable obstacles in proving that they had done so under duress. The Soviet-era criminal procedure code grants victims access to forensic medical examinations after gaining permission from investigators, who routinely refused such requests. Police and procurator’s offices frequently used forced confessions as the basis for criminal cases, and judges frequently used such confessions as the basis for a conviction.
Police tortured with almost complete impunity. The procuracy routinely reviewed complaints of physical abuse, but such procedures amounted to mere formalities at best. In the few cases where criminal proceedings were instituted against police officers, the procurator’s office gave no priority to the investigation and often tried to sabotage the proceedings, delaying and closing them without good reason. Police sometimes intimidated complaining torture victims as well as procurators and judges dealing with criminal cases against them.'
Finally, here is a case (from http://hrw.org/wr2k2/europe16.html) you probably think is just a western media exaggeration, where an innocent man was arrested and tortured by the Police to make him confess to the rape and murder of a girl:
'The torture of Aleksei Mikheev was a particularly egregious example of Russian police methods. On September 10, 1998, police in Nizhnii Novgorod detained Mikheev on misdemeanor charges but subsequently questioned him regarding the presumed murder and rape of a teenage girl. Mikheev confessed after police reportedly beat and electrocuted him; when police wanted him to confess to five more murders, Mikheev jumped out of the third-floor window of the interrogation room, breaking his spinal cord. Several days later, the girl, whom Mikheev confessed he murdered, turned up in perfect health.'
You can read a full report detailing dozens of even worse incidents of Police torture at this webpage: CONFESSIONS AT ANY COST - Police Torture in Russia
But hell, I'm sure you know best Stavka2, people only get locked up by the Police and the FSB in Russia if they are criminals or evil terrorists. The fact is that in Russia it is not necessary to liquidate someone, when you can just accuse them of espionage and have them die in a labour camp or one of those extremely overcrowded prisons.
Are you suggesting that if the FSB were responsible for some, or all, of the Moscow bombings, then that would be OK, since the peole they were smearing were already killers?
The big IF! One could apply the same insinuation to FBI about 9/11 or to Mossad about bombings in Israel or about you beating your wife. To insinuate is easy, cheap and it is hard for the accused to prove the negative.
Oh, so you can't try people anymore? Is that it? So when the US tries Chineses American scientists it is a human rights violator? So you've proven with this case that the FSB is doing its job...where is the torture alligation here?
As for the forced police confessions...start in your own backyard...last I checked, it was pretty much standard policy in most American police departments and has caused quite a few people to be stuck on death row.
This one is about the Chicago police
California cops
UN accuses US of regular torture sessions in prison.
Do you need more? No problem, just type in US/American police torture on google...amazing what you find.
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