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| Russia | |
| Chechen boomer babes were roommates | |
| 2004-08-30 | |
| They lived in the same apartment in Chechnya, worked in the same market and may have died within moments of each other on separate airliners that crashed in Russia last week. New details emerged Monday about the two Chechen women who are the focus of suspicion that the planes were blown up by terrorists. Russian investigators continued piecing together information about the Tuesday crashes that killed a total of 90 people. Gen. Andrei Fetisov, chief of the scientific department at the Federal Security Service, said investigators are certain there were explosions on both planes and reiterated that traces of the high explosive hexogen were found in the wreckage. How the explosive may have been brought on board the planes that took off from Moscow is still unclear, and investigators were scraping for clues about Amanta Nagayeva and S. Dzhebirkhanova, two Chechen women whose names were listed on tickets for the flights. The crashes happened just five days before presidential elections in Chechnya, where separatist rebels have been fighting Russian forces for five years. Officials had warned that insurgents and their supporters could commit terrorist acts to try to undermine the vote. Nagayeva, 30, and Dzhebirkhanova, 37, aroused accident investigators' suspicions because they purchased tickets at the last minute — and because they were the only victims about whom no relatives inquired after news of the crashes. At the same time, the women's bodies have not yet been identified. Officials were considering two scenarios: Either Nagayeva and Dzhebirkhanova were indeed suicide bombers, or their passports were used by other women, the newspaper Izvestia reported, citing Chechen law enforcement officials. Nagayeva and Dzhebirkhanova, who lived in an apartment in Grozny, Chechnya's war-shattered capital, were seen on Aug. 22 leaving by bus from the town of Khasavyurt in the neighboring province of Dagestan, the newspaper said. They were believed to be en route to Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, where they often bought clothes and other commodities to sell at the Grozny market. The women's destination on the bus was not known. They were accompanied by two apartment mates and co-workers — Rosa Nagayeva, Amanta's sister, and Mariyam Taburova, the newspaper said. Nagayeva was single, and Dzhebirkhanova had been divorced. Nagayeva's brother disappeared three years ago in Chechnya; the family believes he was abducted by Russian forces. A brother of Dzhebirkhanova, who had been an Islamic court judge under Chechen separatist president Aslan Maskhadov, was killed in 1998. An unidentified Chechen Interior Ministry official was quoted as telling Izvestia that both women were "clean" of demonstrable rebel ties. Relatives of both said they were unaware the women were engaged in any activity connected to rebels or terrorists, Izvestia reported. Nagayeva's mother said her daughter had never flown on an airplane. According to the investigators, if the two women were indeed terrorists and had traveled from Grozny to Moscow, Taburova and Nagayeva's sister also could be suspects and be in the capital, Izvestia said.
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| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #3 What is it about Chechens that makes them such hard cases today? Besides the fact they've been infected with the suicidal strain of devilish militant Islam carried in with jihadees from Arabia? Another factor's Putin's chosing the worst elements of two possible pacification strategies - the soft touch and the psycho touch. Pretending to offer the Chechens a degree of autonomy whilst Russian troops engage in the sort of indiscriminate slaughter they did so well at in Afghanistan. You end up with a lot pissed off bereaved relatives it's hard not to empathise with them to some degree. Including women so choked with hatred, you shouln't allow them on planes any more... I expect Stalin chose the latter strategy and stuck to it. |
| Posted by: Bulldog 2004-08-31 3:43:09 AM |
| #2 What is it about Chechens that makes them such hard cases today? And why is it that Stalin was able to roll over them? |
| Posted by: Classical_Liberal 2004-08-30 11:27:40 PM |
| #1 Hell... that's not a nano-violin.... it's a nano-noseflute |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-08-30 7:40:19 PM |