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| Terror Networks |
| More on the attempted Kaspiisk bombing... |
| 2002-05-18 |
| Operation ''whirlwind-antiterror'' (a police codename for a set of measures aimed at tightening security around potential targets) that started in Dagestan after the May 9 terrorist act has yielded its first tangible result. On Thursday night, officers of the local Directorate for Fighting Extremism detained three people, who, according to operational data, had been preparing another terrorist act in the town. Servicemen of the Dagestani Interior Ministry said that a powerful landmine was seized from the criminals. Hokay. Got that part yesterday... The operatives reported that the suspected terrorists were detained on the town’s central Lenin Street near a laundry – at exactly the same spot where the bomb went off on May 9. The suspects did not offer the police any resistance, but strongly objected to their detention, saying they had committed no crime. ''They said they had violated no laws and demanded that we release them immediately,'' a duty officer told Gazeta.Ru on Friday, ''But when doing so, they were all very on-edge. It was clear that they were not telling us everything.'' "Y'got nuttin' on me, coppers! Nuttin'!" When the police searched the car’s boot they found a military-issue MON-100 landmine complete with electrical detonator and a radio remote control. A similar landmine exploded in Kaspiisk during a military parade on May 9, killing 42 people and wounding over 100. The detainees said they had no idea how the landmine got in the boot. The interrogation went on throughout the night, but none of the three confessed to anything. "Landmine? Ummm... Not mine. Somebody musta left it there..." The head of the Russian Federal Security Service Nikolai Patrushev, made an official statement, saying that those detained were not terrorists and that no terrorist act was planned. The FSB director claimed that the incident was connected to a settling of accounts between Kaspiisk criminal groups. It's crooks, rather than terrorists? With landmines? Where's the difference? An employee in Dagestan’s government office commented on Patrushev’s statement saying: ''He is talking rubbish! What criminal settling of accounts can we talk about? This is complete nonsense.'' Officers of the Department for Fighting Extremism also said they considered the terrorist version as the most probable. The department’s director has declined to comment, saying only that an investigation was under way, but one of the officers said that they were working on the assumption that it was a planned terrorist act. They'd be pretty stoopid not to... Asked how the operatives managed to detain the suspected criminals, the officer said the department had received operational data about a planned terrorist act. So they were looking for the bomb that these guys didn't know anything about, that somebody just left there. The detained have already been identified, but their personal information has not been disclosed to the press in the interests of the investigation. Gazeta.Ru learned that one of those detained lives and works in Kaspiisk and another arrived in the town from the republic’s Botlevsky district. The third suspect (who the police believe was the leader of the group) works in the Dagestani Interior Ministry. His name is Rashid Djabrailov. There goes his pension... |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |