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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| The Grenade Finds a Hero |
| 2005-07-22 |
| I'm not sure, but I guess by "Hero" they mean the dead officer. The case of the failed attempt to assassinate U.S. President George Bush in Georgia came to a sudden and dramatic conclusion. Vladimir Artyunian, a 27-year-old unemployed man suspected of the attempted assassination, was arrested in Tbilisi on Wednesday night. He stubbornly resisted arrest, killing Zurab Kvlividze, the head of the counterterrorist center of Georgia's Interior Ministry. News of the capture of Artyunian, who yesterday confessed to the crime, forced Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili to interrupt his vacation abroad and return to Tbilisi. The United States is carefully monitoring the progress of the investigation. Meanwhile, the Russian military is denying reports that the arrested man had anything to do with the Russian forces group in the Transcaucasus. Georgian special forces were able to pick up the trail of the man who threw an dummy RGD-5 grenade (dummy?) at U.S. President George Bush in Tbilisi's Freedom Square on May 10 of this year after Georgian Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili displayed a photo of the suspect â a young man wearing sunglasses â at a press conference on Monday. Journalists immediately noticed the very high quality of the photo. Every detail was visible, but it was shot from a strange perspective from above (experts later explained the photo had been taken from an American satellite). WTF, we're watching rallies now? I'll have to take this with a large dose of salt.The minister reported that the person or group of persons who helped find the criminal would receive a reward of 150,000 lari (about $80,000) from the state. The photo was shown on all eight of Georgia's TV stations several times an hour. The Interior Ministry received more than 100 calls about people who resembled the suspect. Groups of three or four officers of the Interior Ministry's counterintelligence service were sent to the site to check out each report. On Wednesday afternoon, the ministry received information that the person in the photo was Vladimir Artyunian, who lived with his mother in the Tbilisi suburb of Vashlijvari. Three Interior Ministry officers, including Zurab Kvlividze, the head of the ministry's counterterrorist center, went to verify the information, still unaware that this time they would encounter the real criminal. On arriving in Vashlijvari, the officers discovered that Artyunian was not at home. His mother said she hadn't seen her son for several days. The officers were suspicious and decided not to leave. A few hours later, a bearded man carrying a backpack and dressed in an army uniform, who resembled the person in the photo, entered the apartment building. When the Interior Ministry officers approached him, he snatched a submachine gun, opened fire, and killed Colonel Kvlividze. The two remaining officers returned fire, wounding the suspect in the stomach and shoulder. Artyunian still managed to escape from the entrance and hide in a nearby park. The officers called for reinforcements, after which Interior Ministry commandos arriving at the scene barricaded the park. Artyunian was captured within half an hour. The commandos, who had strict orders from the Interior Ministry to take the suspect alive, fired into the air, forcing Artyunian to return fire and spend all his ammunition (two magazines of a Kalashnikov). After his arrest, Artyunian was taken to the republican hospital. The doctors reported that despite a perforating wound in the stomach, the patient's life was not in danger. He told the doctors that if he had the chance, he would try to kill George Bush again. Later, when FBI agents in Georgia tried to question him, he swore at them in English. It turned out he spoke the language fairly well. Interesting Meanwhile, Artyunian's mother was questioned at the Interior Ministry building and then released. During questioning, she repeated that she didn't believe her son could have tried to kill the president of the United States. Anzhela Artyunian works as a seller in the market. As for her son, Vladimir, the neighbors said he was unsociable and had no friends. Residents of Vashlijvari added that Vladimir, who had lived in that building for 23 years, behaved strangely. One of these oddities, in their opinion, was that he never responded to the neighbors' invitations to drink cold beer with them in the courtyard. Many people in Tbilisi regard this behavior as proof that there was something wrong with him. Now, who do we know who doesn't drink alcohol? The Artyunian family, which moved to Tbilisi from the country, was very poor. Residents of the apartment building say he never had five tetri (three cents) to go up to the apartment on the paid elevator. Artyunian had a ninth-grade education; he had grown up without his father, and had never worked anywhere. A search of the basement of the apartment building turned up explosives, homemade explosive devices, RGD-5 hand grenades, and even some chemical and biological substances. It is interesting that a copy of Frederick Forsythe's bestseller The Day of the Jackal was found in the Artyunian's apartment, along with ammunition and weapons. Recall that this book recounts the organization of an assassination attempt on French President Charles de Gaulle. According to the investigators, the book was seized and added to the investigation materials. A gas mask, a night vision device, two complete military uniforms with decorations, military training literature, a large quantity of electronic devices, and Russian army epaulets and caps were also found in the apartment. No copies of the Koran, huh? Sounds like your classic "white male loner" According to Merabishvili's statement, the Georgian Interior Ministry, together with its American counterparts, was working on uncovering links between the terrorist and his motives. U.S. Secret Service spokesman Eric Zaren said in Washington yesterday that the American president's security service was closely monitoring the progress of the investigation being carried out by the Georgian authorities. It was learned yesterday that President Saakashvili, who had been vacationing in the Netherlands at the home of his wife, Sandra Roelofs, immediately broke off his vacation and returned to Tbilisi. As the presidential administration reported, Saakashvili's early return was connected with the arrest of the suspect in the attempted terrorist act in Freedom Square. Colonel Vladimir Kuparadze, the deputy commander of the Russian forces group in the Transcaucasus, made his own statement concerning Artyunian's arrest. Kuparadze called reports on Artyunian's involvement with the group in the Georgian media âabsurd and provocativeâ. âI officially declare that the suspect has nothing whatsoever to do with us; the media should be more careful about circulating such reports,â he said. |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #10 "Every detail was visible, but it was shot from a strange perspective from above (experts later explained the photo had been taken from an American satellite)" Somone has been reading too much Tom Clancy. This was from a UAV or similar high point mounted camera. Thats pretty obvious from the photographic details and the angle. Read up about angles, slant ranges, atmospherics and optics - you'll figure it out that this was not a satellite photo. Occham's razor seems to be in great disuse these days. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2005-07-22 20:51 |
| #9 i ain't that old......bag |
| Posted by: 21 century Deli 2005-07-22 20:07 |
| #8 Hello Deli, you are right Deli, itn really just a Firebee 1 of 35! But don't it look swell Deli? 30 Missions Deli! Maybe thisn the one that looked John McCain in the I. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-07-22 19:59 |
| #7 Ship, that thang delivers potato salad. you baaad. |
| Posted by: Deli 2005-07-22 19:52 |
| #6 Neighbors say his family was very poor but he had an arsenal in the basement. Just like a hillbilly that cant feed his kids but always has money for cigarettes and beer? |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2005-07-22 14:26 |
| #5 Here's what they really used, this is an advanced Predator.... remember to look up when you hear it. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-07-22 13:05 |
| #4 I thought we could read license plates? Or izzat jsut Hollywierd? |
| Posted by: Bobby 2005-07-22 12:32 |
| #3 Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili displayed a photo of the suspect â a young man wearing sunglasses â at a press conference on Monday. Journalists immediately noticed the very high quality of the photo. Every detail was visible, but it was shot from a strange perspective from above (experts later explained the photo had been taken from an American satellite). Not if you can see that kind of detail. LEO sats can do maybe 1-meter resolution, max, due to the maximum size of the lens that can be carried. As I understand it. Ahem. |
| Posted by: mojo 2005-07-22 11:57 |
| #2 More likely than a satellite would have been a UAV or other airplane doing recon to watch a large area around the rally. |
| Posted by: DO 2005-07-22 11:47 |
| #1 Steve--I don't think we'd normally task satellites to photograph rallies--unless we have someone like, oh, say, maybe, our President there. I'd still take it with a big grain of salt because I wouldn't think we'd want to expose just how high-res photos our satellites can take. Who knows--maybe this "very high quality" photo was still degraded and/or cropped to conceal the true capabilities. |
| Posted by: Dar 2005-07-22 11:04 |