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.
In 1993 Grigory Pasko filmed a Russian naval tanker dumping radioactive waste and ammunition in the Sea of Japan. He also showed the threat to the environment caused by ships from Russia's decaying Pacific fleet.
Grigory Pasko was convicted on the basis of a secret military decree in a Vladivostok court in December 2001, and sentenced to four years in a labour camp. He was convicted at the behest of the FSB using a secret decree of the Russian Ministry of Defence. That defied a November 2001 ruling by the Russian Supreme Court to the effect that the Russian Constitution specifically forbids the use of secret decrees in criminal cases.
If the Russian government wants to get someone it won't allow the law to get in the way!
Another problem is the fact that in Russia people are commonly held in pre-trial detention, in appalling conditions, for very long periods. Dr Valentin Danilov has already spent a year in pre-trial detention and his is a high profile case. He has also had a heart attack while in pre-trial detention. I suppose as far as your concerned it would be cheaper if he just died, whether he is innocent or not.
Dmitri Nederovsky was a conscientious objector who wished to use his constitutional right to civilian service. He was also held in pre-trial detenion for a long period and he was beaten up regularly by the prison warders. Innocent people held in pre-trial detention have to put up with the same absymal conditions as convicted prisoners. In 1999, the official Russian human rights body found that 85,000 Russian prisoners have no beds, 91,000 have tuberculosis, 5,000 have AIDS.
Wouldn't you say that holding innocent people in pre-trial detention for years, in extremely overcrowded prisons with sadistic prison warders and prisoners who are suffering from dangerous and contagious diseases, is a form of torture?
Human Rights Watch...yes the Liberal's favorite tool...now aren't they busy right now screaming about the Jennin Massacres, as they've screamed at every slight alligation...like the Serbian massacres, but some how always failed to notice when Islamics or Socialists do any of the massacring? Yup, they're the same ones...the Berkly crowd.
Actually, HRW and Amnesty International do document atrocities by Islamic and Socialist governments.
I'm sure you find some of their campaigns irritating, being Russian and an Islamophobe I suppose you would have liked to have ignored the Serbian massacres.
... you should be cheering him on as he is in the process of enforcing new laws to force a trial by jury system.
But he still hasn't passed a specific criminal law forbidding the use of torture, even though the Russian Constitution forbids it. Nor has he reformed the Soviet era Police guidelines which allow the Police to cover up incidents of torture.
Even if they did have trial by jury, that would not help if a confession is presented to the court that was signed under torture. Also the COE asked him to revoke the death penalty, he has only temporarily halted it. Amnesty International estimates that a third of the people on death row in Russia are innocent and were made to sign a bogus confession under torture.
Ex-Moscow city court judge Sergei Pashin was basically fired in October 2000 for making liberal decisions, he had campaigned against numerous miscarriages of justice. Apparently, he was hated by most other judges because he dared to find defendants innocent. Therefore, they used an incident in which he gave a desperate woman his office telephone number during a radio phone-in program, as grounds to dismiss him.
In 2000, an orphan living under a staircase in Moscow was sentenced to 5 years in prison for stealing a pair of trousers and two jars of jam. What a compassionate people you Russians are!
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.
As I told you last week I am English, so I don't have much knowledge about the US justice system. However, I have no doubt that the US justice system allows Americans to stand up for their rights far better than the Russian system does. Hence, I have more faith in the US prosecuting their Police for torture than in the Russian 'justice' system doing likewise.
Britain doesn't have the death penalty any more, thank goodness, and accusations of Police torture are taken very seriously. The British Armed Forces are one of the few Armed Forces that have undertaken not to torture people under any circumstances. Britain's military has led the way in developing methods of deception and psychological conditioning that mean torture of enemy soldiers is not required. The Russian military, on the other hand, use torture with impunity and I've heard that the officers also practise their latest torture methods on their own conscript soliders.
British appeal court quashes conviction after hearing of police torture
The British torture exports
British police adopting Soviet practices.
Report on torture and deaths in custady in British police Particularly look at the aspects to worry about: the number of deaths, unexplained of course, in British holding facilities. Like I said, clean up your own backyard before you come preaching to mine.
I am glad that Putin is installing trial by jury. But he must also permanently abolish the death penalty, it must go because there are so many innocent people on death row in Russia. He must also pass a specific law forbidding torture and reform the rights of Police detainees. Otherwise, juries will just be rubber stamping falsified evidence and confessions.
I certainly would not defend the USA's use of pretrial detention. I heard of an alleged paedophile, an innocent man, who was held in pretrial detention for 5 years!
As for the Serbian massacres, most were against the Serbs. Unlike you, I served as part of that peace keeping force in Bosnia and I saw the BS that the media and your liberal orgs do NOT report on. To unPC.
I agree that sometimes human rights organisations do not campaign against certain atrocities because it doesn't fit their agenda. Why don't you start your own campaign to publicise the things you witnessed that no one bothered to report?
British appeal court quashes conviction after hearing of police torture
The West Midlands Serious Crime Squad was disbanded in 1989 and it was disgrace. But as the article says:
'30 convictions have been overturned by the court of appeal. In another 19, the charges were dropped, the defendants acquitted or the judge directed not guilty verdicts.'
At least in Britain when the truth comes out, justice is generally done. I fear the same can not be said for Russia.
Another famous case of Police wickedness was the Guildford four trial, they were sentenced to life in the 70s for the Guildford pub bombing on the basis of confessions extracted under duress and falsified evidence. They were released after a successful appeal 14 years later, all apart from one man who tragically died in prison. However, in Russia at that time they would all have been executed, so you can hardly lecture us about justice.
The British torture exports
That is an old article. The British Government has clamped down on this disgusting trade. The taser was banned for export in July 1997 along with all electro-shock weapons, leg irons, gang chains and shackles. It was classified as "equipment used for torture". For more information on this see: Stun guns on UK torture list
The Metropolitan Police are buying tasers from the USA, in order to use them against people who would otherwise be shot. The USA and South Africa sell lots of stuff that can be used for torture to virtually anyone.
British police adopting Soviet practices
'Stop and Search' is an old policy that personally I disagree with, since there is no evidence that it aids crime detection or allows the Police to do anything but harass the ethnic minorities. But its not torture.
Report on torture and deaths in custody in British police
The RUC are mainly responsible for the ill treatment of criminal/terrorist suspects. Their methods are despicable and I regard them with contempt. However, I'm sure they could learn a lot from your FSB about torture methods. Northern Ireland is not a fair example of British Police conduct, its a bit like saying the Russian 'zachista' operations in Chechnya are representative of the behaviour of the average Russian Policeman.
As for torture in mainland British Police custody, if it is discovered it results in the immediate cessation of all criminal charges against the suspect. The Russian Police torture with impunity because they know they will not be punished and their victims will not be be able to prove they were tortured.
Compassion? This from a people that made it a policy to colonize by any means, including exiling for life anyone hungry enough to steal a loaf of bread. Don't preach, you Limes are hated across the world for the crap you did for 300 years, don't even get on that high horse.
You're making a mistake here, the colonialist Britain is dead and good riddance to it. One of the main priorities of my generation is to make sure that sort of wanton imperialism never surfaces again. The vast majority of modern British people condemn what the British Empire did and don't wish for it to be repeated ever. Its a shame you Russians can't adopt an anti-imperialist attitude. I suppose in a country where there are still the trappings of oligarchy that is quite difficult.
Its all very well blasting Britain for things that happened 50 or more years ago, but your country is doing equally horrific things right now, in the 21st century.
Interesting that you should mention fish and chips. We always get criticism for our fish and chips, apparently they doesn't count as a sophisticated national cuisine.
I have a good Russian friend who visited me for a week last November. She had worked on a farm in Wales as a strawberry picker during her school summer holiday in 1992. During her 1992 visit she had fish and chips and when I asked her what meal she would like on her first night staying with me, guess what she asked for? Fish and chips. She told me that she only had them once but she loved them. It just goes to show fish and chips may be common, but they hit the spot!
The fact is, the kinder, gentler Britian is more dangerous and worrysome then most any part of America. Considering the number and violence of the riots that are now occuring yearly and more and more often, be they by communists, pakistanies, islamics, or soccer nuts and anarchists, what does it matter? Plus the murder rate and violent crime in general is also rediculous in your country. That a man, defending his farm and home from intruders, should be sent to life in jail for killing a robber is plain rediculous. If the bastard wanted to live, he should not have entered the house to rob it. And before you lecture me on the finer aspects of British law, the 16 year old dead kid had 66 arrests!
Don't you care about all the innocent people who are on death row in Russia?
I fully agree with the US use of it.
I'm sure you do. The average American doesn't seem to be too bothered about the execution of innocent people either. Russians and Americans have that in common.
As for your comment about the 70's and what would have happened then, well, considering it was under Communist rule, probably right. It hasn't been so for 11 years and counting.
If you had your way innocent people would be being executed today.
The fact is, the kinder, gentler Britain is more dangerous and worrysome then most any part of America.
Rubbish, most of Britain is very peaceful, it is the poor inner city areas that are troubled. The situation in American inner cities is far worse, mostly because of the easy availability of fire arms. Russia has far more violent crime than Britain and it is also plagued by the mafia.
Considering the number and violence of the riots that are now occuring yearly and more and more often, be they by communists, pakistanis, islamics, or soccer nuts and anarchists, what does it matter?
Communists? Islamics? Anarchists?
The recent rioting in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford was caused by the far-right. The British National Party, the National Front and Combat 18, they act as "agent provocateurs". Before each of these riots, the NF and C18 had been stirring up trouble in areas mainly populated by asians. After a few weeks of this sort of activity and plenty of verbal and physical intimidation, all that was required to start a riot was a small incident. I know because I was in Bradford and I witnessed the NF and C18 taunting peaceful asian residents. The Pakistanis and 'Islamics' (as you put it) were reacting to extreme provocation from the NF and C18. The BNP deliberately facilitated the riots so that they could profit during the elections from the resentment felt by local white people towards the asian rioters. It’s a cynical right-wing political strategy, in the old fascist tradition of 'divide and conquer'.
If you don't believe me then look at what David Copeland (the Soho nail bomber and a member of the BNP) told the Police after he was caught: "…my aim was to start a race war in this country, there'd be a backlash and then all the whites would go out and vote BNP".
Also look at what kind of people lead the BNP and the NF. The BNP Election Organiser, Tony "Bomber" Lecomber, has been jailed for a nailbomb attack. Terry Blackham, National Activities Organiser of the National Front, has over twenty convictions for violence and was sentenced to 4 and a half years after being arrested boarding a ferry to Northern Ireland carrying submachine guns and a grenade launcher. Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP, received a two year suspended sentence for inciting racial hatred when he published literature denying the Holocaust.
As for soccer hooligans, I suspect that you would get on very well with them. Because the ringleaders are usually NF or C18 members and they are extreme nationalists and racists. They, like you, love the idea of having the death penalty, corporal punishment, conscription etc.
Plus the murder rate and violent crime in general is also ridiculous in your country.
The murder rate in Britain is lower than in the USA or Russia. We have a ban on the ownership of pistols, semi-automatic rifles and strict rules about shot-gun ownership, which means there is less deadly violence then in the USA.
That a man, defending his farm and home from intruders, should be sent to life in jail for killing a robber is plain rediculous. If the bastard wanted to live, he should not have entered the house to rob it. And before you lecture me on the finer aspects of British law, the 16 year old dead kid had 66 arrests!
First of all, that man was in possession of an unlicensed pump action shot-gun. Second, he was expecting the robbers that night because of a previous incident, so he deliberately had the shot-gun with him, to be ready for them. Third, he fired repeatedly, without attempting to issue a warning first and he continued firing long after he could have ceased.
In other cases where people shot burglars under similar circumstances they were found innocent. But in this case the obvious premeditation, the illegal weapon and the level of unnecessary force that was used gave the jury no choice but to convict.
The fact that you approve of the killing of a child robber tells me everything I need to know about you. Besides, you should be applauding Britain's lack of a death penalty, in the USA his killer would have been executed.
Fear in Britain They have no guns so they have a lot of crime. Be sure to read it all the way through to find out how much English law enforcement lies. Even mentions the British practice of obtaining false confessions from prisoners...how lovely and civilized. Does the Queen know?
Thankfully the Duma has followed the American example at last after following the enlightened EU path to failure. Now citizens are allowed to use any force necessary against any criminal, to include killing them.
Myth of a Safe Britian Be sure to follow the chart, sums that up nicely.
In Guns We Trust You lecture about to much power in government's hands and the evil it does like conscription....well here's a good reason to own those barbaric guns.
This should be enough to get you started.
I believe you're right. I heard about a man in Texas who saw someone trying to break into his car which was parked outside his house, so he took his revolver and shot him dead. The Police arrived and congratulated him. Funny, I didn't realise that car theft was punishable by death in the USA, even in Red China car theft does not get the death penalty.
Yes, I do applaud the killing of criminals...do you know why? because I believe in Freedom and Responsability...two worlds the English have forgotten.
We haven't forgotten these words, we just don't like the idea of civilians acting as judge, jury and executioner without any accountability. Also we don't have the death penalty because it was used in the past on innocent people.
It was used on Odell Barnes Jr, an innocent man, in the USA in 2000 see here. Here are another half a dozen Americans who may well have been innocent, but were executed see here. Apparently, in 2000, Florida lead the USA in wrongful convictions among Death Row inmates.
'Last year, (1999) 75 percent of the death-penalty cases brought before the appeals court were overturned… Last month, with the support of Gov. Jeb Bush, legislators in a three-day special session passed the Death Penalty Reform Act of 2000, a new law to limit appeals from Death Row inmates. Its aim is to allow the execution of Death Row inmates within five years of sentencing.
The governor says the new law puts victims' rights on a par with those of criminals, and that a faster appeals process should help free the innocent, as well as execute the guilty, more quickly.
Critics, however, say history shows that cutting the appeals process, particularly to five years or less, is almost certain to result in the execution of innocent people.
"What we know if we look at the 85 exonerations nationwide since 1976 is that the average time that people spent on Death Row was 7½ years before new evidence came to light," said Elizabeth Semel, director of the American Bar Association's Death Penalty Representation Project in Washington.'
For more details see here.
But hell, I guess you aren't bothered, you're prepared to write off at least 5,000 Russian conscripts each year, so why should you care about a few innocent Americans being executed. I'm sure plenty of innocent Russians were also executed when Russia used its death penalty, since the Russians authorities aren't too worried about little things like due process or innocence.
If I commit the crime I do the time and if that means I might get shot in the process, well that's something I need to put into the consideration process.
Yes, obviously we can't allow people to commit crimes with impunity, so there have to be appropriate punishments. However, sometimes people commit crimes because they are from very poor backgrounds, or they have received no education or parental guidance etc. Thus instead of just throwing them in prison for 5 or 10 years, as would happen in good old Russia, perhaps it would be better to actually educate them and equip them to be useful members of society. After all, jailing a starving child orphan for petty theft, as happened in 2000 in Moscow, in an overcrowded prison where he will only be indoctrinated into more serious forms of crime, will not help him go "straight" later on in life. Or do you believe that it would be cheaper and easier to just execute people for any felony?
Fear in Britain They have no guns so they have a lot of crime. Be sure to read it all the way through to find out how much English law enforcement lies. Even mentions the British practice of obtaining false confessions from prisoners...how lovely and civilized.
This article states: Another "common practice," according to one retired Scotland Yard senior officer, is "falsifying clear-up rates by gaining false confessions from criminals already in prison."
Well guess who has perfected this scam - Russia. The Russian Police and Prison authorities have developed a system of 'pressing cells' which are staffed by prisoners loyal to them. They put suspects or prisoners into these cells and leave them to be beaten, raped, psychologically abused by the 'loyalist' prisoners until they confess to whatever crime the authorities wish. It seems to me that you are in no position to lecture Britain about obtaining false confessions.
Consider the following quote from here:
'Police detectives use criminal suspects and defendants who are trusted and given special privileges in SIZOs and IVSs to beat, rape, or otherwise force suspects and defendants into confessing or providing needed testimony. This widespread practice is called the "pressing room" or "press hut" (press-khata in Russian) because police trustees "press" the detainee within the confines of the pretrial cell. In exchange for their services, these prisoners-who serve both as police enforcers and informers-receive privileges, such as access to narcotics and women.'
In Russia the Police also torture innocent people who have only witnessed crimes, for example:
'Tatiana Popkova, Igor Akhrimenko's former girlfriend, also said she was forcibly taken to a police station in the fall of 1996 and also told to sign an interrogation report, which police refused to allow her to read.
She told Human Rights Watch:
I asked her to [allow me to] read [it] but she categorically refused, covered the text with her hands and said: "Sign." "How can I sign, without reading? Maybe I'm signing someone's death sentence?"... A man came in...an elderly one. I understood that he had a fairly high position. He pulled my hat off me, took me by the hair and smashed my face into the wall. I got very scared, first of all, I didn't expect that that would happen because I had never come across such violence. He smashed me into the wall several times. I started feeling bad and started falling off the chair.
She said police officers also threatened to throw her into a "pressing room." Another police officer later intervened and released her.' From here.
Also in Russia the Police often aren't bothered about leaving obvious signs of torture. I heard about a man who was detained in Moscow because he didn't have his internal passport with him. The Police tortured him at the Police station by pouring boiling water over his chest, which left huge obvious burns. Interestingly, although he spent three months in hospital - because the burns got infected, no charges were ever brought against the Police!
Read about even more incidents like this here.
Myth of a Safe Britian Be sure to follow the chart, sums that up nicely.
This article states: 'Yet between 1981 and 1996 the homicide rate in the US decreased significantly, while in England it rose from 0.011 per 1,000 population to 0.013.4 Recently released British police figures for the year ending April, 1998, show an alarming 26% increase in the murder rate in London and an incredible 85% increase in Northumbria.'
I notice that at no point in this article does it actually give the murder rate in the USA. It just says the murder rate is increasing in Britain, gives the figures, but then says that it is decreasing in the USA.
I come from Northumbria and I can tell you that the increased murder rate has a lot to do with the economic recession and job losses that have been going on there over the last few years. Northumbria is one of the most run down parts of Britain, even while the rest of Britain has been doing well, it has been experiencing severe hardship. The US economy was booming in 1998, therefore, comparing the US's decreasing murder rate to the increasing murder rate of Northumbria is ridiculous.
In Guns We Trust You lecture about to much power in government's hands and the evil it does like conscription....well here's a good reason to own those barbaric guns.
Why, what are you going to do shoot the draft board when they try to conscript you?
This article states: 'Overall, the researchers found that 44 percent of the more than 6,000 respondents had "hardly any" confidence in at least one of the government branches -- "significantly more than expressed similar levels of mistrust in the 1960s," Curry said. They also found that those who mistrusted all branches of the federal government were significantly more likely to own a gun (37 percent) than those who trusted all three (23 percent)…'
Isn't this distrust of the Federal Government exactly the attitude the Branch Davidians had at Waco? Also don't the survivalists have this attitude too? The survivalists had a hand in the Oklahoma bombing if I remember correctly. Perhaps letting extremely paranoid people own firearms and form militias isn't such a good idea!
As for your assertion that guns can be very effective for protecting oneself and one's homes. Don't you think that when it is necessary to carry a pistol around with you or to keep a shot-gun in your home to protect yourself, then you might as well give up all pretence at living in a civilised society?
Finally, I think the accidents and mass murders that occur because of the commonness of guns in the USA, outweigh the advantages. I heard about a man whose car broke down one night in Florida and who had to go knocking on local peoples' doors to ask for help. A man shot him through his door, because he thought he might be a burglar!
Then what about all these shootings in schools and offices by disgruntled students and employees? How about the fact that criminals in the USA often carry guns and have to be prepared to use them, since the Police or the public would also be prepared to shoot them. It all sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.
And what is your point here? You are using statistics out of context. Let me point out, that this says nothing of why they were over turned. Most, the vast majority are overturned because of technicalities or liberal judges not because the perp is not guilty. That is the problem with you liberals, you constantly follow yellow journalism. Let me make this analogy as to the one or two innocent people that do get executed (which by the way is becoming increasingly unrealistic with dna evidence). Should police stop arresting people because some innocent (and a lot more then are executed) get caught? At what point is society to suffer as a whole so that not a mistake is made?
What we know if we look at the 85 exonerations nationwide since 1976 is that the average time that people spent on Death Row was 7½ years before new evidence came to light," said Elizabeth Semel, director of the American Bar Association's Death Penalty Representation Project in Washington.'
Lets see, that's over 27 years, that makes approximately 3 wrongfull executions a year out of about 400 executions nationwide...so that makes for a less then 1% failure rate...yup, I'd say that's pretty damn good when you throw in that it's human beings doing this. Next attempt....
You see, here you are again using emotions and not logic...as usual. Well, lets see, why is it that all poor people aren't thieves and robbers and murderers then? Did Christ teach that you are responsible for your own actions only if you didn't come from the poor masses? No, He taught that we are all responsible for our actions, regardless of our background. I grew up poor the first half of my life...I didn't burglarize...oh but I'm again being logical and not giving into mindless mass emotion. You won't get very far here on FR with these kinds of bogus arguments.
Again, you avoid the arguement. This isn't about Russia, never said that the police department didn't need clearing out in the Rodina. This is about your claims of how clean the British system is and how peaceful England is. Don't change the subject.
You are rationalizing away the facts. England is the capital of murder (per capita) of the first world nations. Hands down. Fact is, through out the US, a liberalization of gun ownership laws is followed by a drop in crime. Don't worry, when you dear Blair fails again to surpress crime, short of stripping you of the last of your rights and putting 1.6 million more cameras out there to watch you go to the john, England, I believe, will still come to its sense and the older people will through out all the liberal kooks who have ruined your country.
So you agree that England is no longer a civilized society? Since by the time the bobbies get to your home that is being robbed by daylight invasion robberies, you're probably already dead.
As for school shootings, you are full of it. Look at Germany with it's strict laws...problem that all you liberals seems to miss, is that criminals don't follow laws regardless of how strict they are....that (gasp!) is why they are called criminals!
We tear ourselves apart by not having our enemy identified and named specifically.
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