Russian Deputy Prosecutor-General Sergei Fridinskii said on 3 September that two of the hostage takers, whom he claimed included Arabs as well as Chechens, Ingush, and Ossetians, were captured alive. On 6 September, RTR broadcast footage of a man it identified as the sole surviving hostage taker, Nur-Pasha Kulaev. Kulaev claimed a man known as "Colonel" ordered him and his fellow hostage takers to attack the school in Beslan, and that "they told us this task had been set" by Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov and radical field commander Shamil Basayev.
| That contradicts his previous statement that only the Colonel knew what the target was going to be. But then, the SpetsSluzhby have probably been working on him. I suppose it could also be what the Colonel told them when they were already there, with a school full of kiddies and some of the hard boyz feeling queasy... |
Kulaev apparently did not explain whom he meant by "they." The "Colonel" reportedly said the aim of the hostage taking was to unleash a war across the entire Caucasus. In an interview with RFE/RL's North Caucasus Service on 7 September, Maskhadov's representative Akhmed Zakaev said the confession of the man shown on Russian television was clearly obtained under torture.
| Somehow my heartstrings remain untugged... |
He said claims of Maskhadov's involvement in the hostage taking, and the allegations that the hostage takers also included Arabs and African mercenaries, are "part of a well-planned disinformation campaign." Zakaev said the hostage taking was carried out by "local radical groups" that are supported by people overwhelmed by the need for personal revenge for the brutalities committed by the Russian Army.
| "So the obvious thing to do was to take a school full of children, some of them babies, hostage and kill as many of them as they could. What Muslim wouldn't react the same way?" |
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