Troops bring freedom and death to theatre of blood

The raid by Russia's elite forces was planned in the most meticulous detail. Ian Traynor in Moscow tells how the state outmanoeuvred the Chechen guerrillas

For the young women who are the new face of Chechen terrorism, the end came swiftly and savagely. The black-clad guerrillas were put to sleep and paralysed by a gas attack. Then the Russian crack troops came up through the drains and executed the women one by one in cold blood with single point-blank shots to the temple. 'I know it sounds cruel,' said one of the Russian Spetsnaz forces who helped end the Moscow hostage crisis. 'But if someone has two kilos of plastic explosive attached to them, we don't see any other way of disarming them. It was a textbook operation.'

Just as slick was the Russian government's propaganda operation which accompanied and followed yesterday's spectacular pre-dawn storming that left up to 140 dead - some 50 terrorists and at least 90 hostages - and ended the three-day ordeal for some 700 further hostages.

The official version is that the Russian units moved on the theatre in the pre-dawn hours because they had no choice after the terrorists started shooting hostages and some of the captives panicked and launched an escape bid. 'The scenario developed as determined by the terrorists,' explained Vladimir Vasilyev, the Deputy Interior Minister. 'Some time around 5.20am there was shooting and explosions. A group of hostages tried to break out of the building. There was a real threat and the special operation plan was activated.'

In fact - according to soldiers taking part, Western diplomats, and well-informed Russian journalists - the Russian raid was meticulously planned and launched well before hostages rushed for the exits. Indeed the panic inside the theatre may have been triggered by the Russian raiders rather than the terrorists.

Western diplomats were told by the Russians on Friday night to expect a pre-dawn raid on the theatre since negotiations were going nowhere. Ever since the crisis erupted during a musical on Wednesday evening, doctors, humanitarian workers, MPs, journalists and artists had paraded through the theatre to bargain with Movsar Barayev, the 24-year-old leader of the hostage-takers. His sole condition for the release of the hostages was an end to Russia's war in his native Chechnya.

Barayev was leader of the 'Islamic Battalions' of fanatical Muslim guerrillas, fighting both to 'liberate' Chechnya from Russian rule and in support of the worldwide fundamentalist jihad.

But instead of discussing his wider aims, the Russian mediators concentrated on getting children released and arranging supplies of medicine, food and water.

When Anna Politkovskaya - the campaigning journalist who emerged as an unlikely go-between for the Kremlin - came out of the theatre at midnight on Friday to reveal that Barayev was demanding that President Vladimir Putin appoint a senior political negotiator, the Kremlin went through the motions of naming General Viktor Kazantsev, a former commander of the war in Chechnya. Yet he was not even in Moscow and had no intention of arriving here before it was all over.

In this brutal battle of wits between the Russian state and the Chechen guerrillas, Barayev was no slouch at manipulating public opinion, piling on the pressure and behaving just as savagely as the Russians who ultimately executed their quarry and then had state television screen pictures of him all day yesterday- lying slain in a pool of blood with a bottle of Armenian brandy placed by his extended arm.

On Friday morning Barayev made mobile phones available to many of the 75 foreigners being held in the auditorium, including two Britons, and told them to instruct their embassies to pick them up. Convoys of senior diplomats converged on the theatre for hours of frustrating and fruitless negotiations. When Red Cross workers went into the theatre on Friday evening, Barayev told them he had no intention of releasing the foreigners since they were a potent lever in gaining concessions from Moscow.

He is believed to have had Chechen accomplices on the outside among the hordes of troops, media, diplomats, officials and rescue workers surrounding the theatre. They were communicating with the theatre and keeping Barayev informed about Russian troops' deployments.

While Politkovskaya was negotiating with Barayev in the theatre late on Friday, the hard men of the elite Alfa counter-terrorism unit were quietly inserting themselves into the sprawling arts complex via the sewers, cellars and drains, according to Western diplomats, and Valeriy Yakov, the deputy editor of the Noviye Izvestiya newspaper and a specialist in the Russian military.

Yesterday at 6.30am teams of commandos stormed the theatre through the glass doors at the front, firing bursts of automatic gunfire and throwing stun grenades. The spin doctors of the FSB security service made sure the attack was filmed and available to state television. Some of the men slipped in the sleet.

But the real action, invisible to the public, had happened an hour earlier inside the main auditorium. Barayev's gang shot two hostages dead, then General Vladimir Pronichev, the deputy head of the FSB and its top counter-terrorism officer, ordered the Alfa men into action.

'The Spetsnaz guys going in at the front were just for cover,' said Yakov. 'The real work was done earlier by the Alfa men who had been inside since the night before. In an operation like this, the leadership reckons on a 10 per cent casualty rate for it to be successful. The plan was to storm the building at 6am, but it was brought forward slightly.'

Apparently this was because the terrorists shot two captives at 5.20am. 'They killed two hostages right in front of our eyes - a man and a woman,' reported Olga Chernyak, held hostage with her husband, Sergei Fokin. She is a journalist with the Interfax news agency and told her employers from hospital yesterday: 'The bloke shouted something like "Mama, I don't know what to do." The bullet got him in the eyes. There was a lot of spurting blood. I was sitting in the stalls in the middle of the hall. This was right in front of me, two rows away. I thought, "Now they are going to kill all of us." But then something happened, I lost consciousness and woke up in casualty.'

There were nearly 800 people in the auditorium - 750 hostages and some of the 50 terrorists, including 18 women. The Alfa squads demolished a rear wall of the theatre to create a diversion and sent the sleeping gas through the ventilation system to knock out almost everyone in the auditorium.

'We won the psychological war,' said the Spetsnaz officer. 'We leaked the information that the storming would take place at three in the morning. The [Chechen] fighters were on their guard. They began shooting, but there was no raid. Then there was the natural reaction - a relaxation. And at 5am we stormed the place.

'We threw a few grenades into the hall and launched the sleeping gas through the ventilation system. The main thing was succeeding in liquidating the suicide fighters. We came in through specially made openings and just shot the sleeping terrorists at point-blank range.'

The 18 women guerrillas, many of them veiled, and - according to hostages - more aggressive than the men, had explosives strapped to their bellies and were clutching detonators. They were viewed as the biggest risk in the attempt to avoid a bloodbath, which appears to be the reason for the controversial use of the special gas.

'Many are now talking about whether gas was used or not,' said Vasilyev. 'I am authorised to state that a special substance was used. This enabled us to neutralise these women packed with explosives and with their fingers on the detonators. You will understand what could have been the consequences with such a concentration of hostages in the hall.'

Chernyak said that the women fighters constantly pledged their willingness to blow themselves up for the sake of freedom. 'Whenever there was any noise around the building, the women terrorists immediately ran around the room and scattered themselves among the seated hostages. They grabbed their belts and screamed that they were ready to blow up the whole hall.'

It was another 90 minutes before the Russian Government, at 7.10am, could claim it had the theatre under its control. When troops went in through the front at 6.30am, a huge gun battle ensued. Some of the hostages relatively unaffected by the gas were shepherded to buses and ambulances. It appears that some of the 90 hostage deaths were caused in the crossfire. It was also in this battle that Barayev was gunned down.

Yakov, who got inside the theatre just after 7am, said some of the hostages also died after choking on vomit caused by the gassing. Doctors reported that others, unconscious, were bleeding from their noses and mouths.

Anatoliy Belousov, a rescue worker, emerged from the theatre ashen-faced after spending two hours carrying corpses and the limp but living bodies of the gassed hostages out of the battle zone. 'Their faces were so pale. It's hard to imagine what they've been through,' he said.

Yakov, the journalist, said the Russian special forces had performed impeccably, following orders from the Kremlin, but he is convinced the crisis could have been defused with less loss of life. Chernyak, the hostage/journalist disagreed. 'We were waiting for the storming. We were sure it was necessary.'

The Spetsnaz officer bragged that the mood among the Alfa teams was skyhigh. 'This is our first successful operation for years.' And the TV cameras were allowed in to show the results. In gory detail, the cameras repeatedly showed the bloodied and splayed corpses. One young woman dressed in black was bent backwards over a red theatre seat, her face shrouded in a hood. A hand reached forward and unpeeled the hood to reveal a gashed and twisted face smeared with blood.

>Chernyak said that the women fighters constantly pledged their willingness to blow themselves up for the sake of freedom. 'Whenever there was any noise around the building, the women terrorists immediately ran around the room and scattered themselves among the seated hostages. They grabbed their belts and screamed that they were ready to blow up the whole hall.'

The Russians saw this through the spycams and no doubt thought the first priority was to immobilize the women bombers. But you'd think they could bring some antidote in fast knowing what we know from Waco about gases concentrated indoors.

>'We won the psychological war,' said the Spetsnaz officer. 'We leaked the information that the storming would take place at three in the morning. The [Chechen] fighters were on their guard. They began shooting, but there was no raid. Then there was the natural reaction - a relaxation. And at 5am we stormed the place

Great move, talking about your tactics.

One always wonders about these sources. Real Spetsnaz, or a wannabee who conned a reporter? But this line rings true: "The main thing was succeeding in liquidating the suicide fighters."

In anti-terrorism, the main thing is killing all the terrorists, for a number of reasons. Saving the hostages is secondary. Certainly there are some lessons learned from this, but the most important lesson is the one learned in Chechnya: "This doesn't work."

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

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