Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev threatened Tuesday to stage chemical attacks across Russia in retaliation the killing of former rebel leader Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev in Qatar and abuses against Chechen civilians. "We will bomb, blow up, poison, sent on fire, stage gas explosions and fires whenever possible on everything else on the territory of [Russia]," Basayev said in a statement posted on the rebel web site Kavkaz Center. "Combat chemical agents, toxins and different poisons are being used against us. Therefore we reserve the right to use chemical and poisonous substances this year."
Basayev said his Riyadus-Salikhin martyrs' brigade would not use biological or nuclear materials in attacks in Russian cities and would not target mosques, synagogues, children's facilities and mental hospitals. He said his fighters would attack Russians abroad to avenge the death of Yandarbiyev in a car bomb explosion in February -- an attack he blamed on Russian security services. Basayev offered in his statement to suspend attacks against civilians if federal troops in Chechnya stopped abusing the local population.
Lev Fyodorov, head of the Union for Chemical Security and a renowned expert on chemical arms, said Basayev would not be able to seize chemical weapons from Russia's two, well-guarded storage facilities. However, Fyodorov said, there are some 300 sites across the country where chemical arms have been buried, burned or otherwise disposed of between the 1920s and 1990s. Some arms were buried as recently as 1989 and could pose a "serious threat" if retrieved by Basayev, he said. |