Al Qaeda among the Chechens
As Russians bury their dead, officials look at terrorist links to Chechen rebels.
Among the wilted flowers brought to celebrate the first day of classes in the now blackened wreckage of Beslan's School No. 1 are the abundant signs of a sophisticated terror operation. That evidence is sparking a re-examination of the long-standing Chechen links to Al Qaeda.
"They were so well trained - the highest level," says Oleg Tedeyev, deputy chief of a local police unit, who was involved in the battle Friday that freed more than 700 people, and officially left 338 dead, half of them children.
In recent months, radical Islamist Chechen leaders such as Shamil Basayev, along with Osama bin Laden, have been "clear" about wanting to "set Russia on fire," says Michael Radu, a terrorism expert at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. "This is not an Al Qaeda operation: These are autonomous groups," he says. "It's not like bin Laden wrote the checks. But they are synchronized ideologically and strategically."
Survivors say the 30-odd attackers were mostly Russian-speaking Chechens. But as families in this small town near Chechnya bury their dead Monday, they described the end of the saga as one in which both the hostage-takers and Russian special forces were caught off guard by an accidental explosion in the gymnasium, which sparked a lethal firefight and hostage escape.
Still officials here say the evidence suggests a complex operation and the kind of preparation once given in the Al Qaeda training camps of Afghanistan.
When officials entered the school building after the battle, they found syringes. The hostage-takers weren't addicts, but they were taking drugs "to keep them awake," says Mr. Tedeyev, whose own two children escaped as the school was seized. "As a military man, I was surprised how they could position themselves so well. In minutes, in seconds, they understood [the place]. It wasn't the first time they were here."
In the smoldering school, though swept by Russian intelligence and security services, a single singed wire still hangs from a charred basketball hoop - testifying to the web of explosives rigged from the ceiling and walls of the gymnasium, where more than 1,200 agonized hostages were held for three days.
A shredded black belt and bloodied camouflage utility vest lies in the hall next to the cafeteria, where a female suicide bomber detonated herself.
And in the library, chunks of the floor have been hacked away to reveal hiding spaces, where the Chechen separatists had stored ammunition and explosives, perhaps building the stockpile for several months, during summer renovation work.
Russian media reports that as many as 10 of the attackers were Arab have also raised questions about the link with Islamic militant groups.
"I think it's Al Qaeda. I think it's Saudi Arabia, Arabs, and possibly Afghan terrorists - and terrorists who are here in Russia as well," says Soslan Sikoyev, the deputy interior minister for North Ossetia, who has offered to resign for failing to prevent the crisis. He has been kidnapped twice himself by militants in past years.
But he adds tiredly, "It doesn't matter what nationalities they are ... because they have brought so much grief."
