 A 16-year-old Ingush girl and 28-year-old Ingush man have been detained on suspicion of assisting the Beslan hostage-takers, and two more terrorists who were killed inside the school have been identified, officials said Thursday. The girl is suspected of having maintained contacts with one of the terrorists who seized the school on Sept. 1, said Nikolai Shepel, the deputy prosecutor responsible for the North Caucasus, Interfax reported. Shepel refused to identify the girl but said she will remain in custody for at least 30 days, the maximum period a terror suspect can be held without charges being filed. The girl's lawyer, Sharip Tepsoyev, identified her as Marina Korigova, a native of the Ingush village of Sagopshi, and said she was arrested on Nov. 3, Gazeta reported. Korigova made and received 16 cellphone calls to and from Musa Tsechoyev, a 35-year-old native of Sagopshi who investigators believe took part in the school attack, Gazeta said. Tepsoyev said his client knows Tsechoyev but denies having called him. He said Korigova was arrested in the Kabardino-Balkaria capital, Nalchik, where she was studying construction.
| "Wudn't me. Somebody wuz usin' my phone." |
Authorities also recently detained Akhmed Merzhoyev in Sagopshi on suspicion of shipping food and supplies to the terrorists' training camp in Ingushetia's Malgobeksky district and planning to participate in the Beslan attack but changing his mind at the last minute, Vremya Novostei reported. It was unclear whether Merzhoyev is related to Arsen Merzhoyev, a 25-year-old native of the Chechen village of Engenoi who has been identified as one of the terrorists at Beslan. Tsechoyev, whom Korigova is accused of calling, is reportedly well-known among local Wahhabis, followers of a radical strain of Islam who are believed to have carried out a series of raids in Ingushetia this year. However, he had not been named as a suspected hostage-taker until Thursday. Gazeta said he apparently owned the GAZ-66 truck that the terrorists drove to the Beslan school. Tsechoyev's 31-year-old brother Bei-Alla Tsechoyev was one of the 20 hostage-takers identified by the Prosecutor General's Office by early November. |