Authorities opened a criminal case against the Chechen terrorists, but no further effort was made to probe on the way the security services or the Kremlin had responded. Family members of victims tried in vain to learn more about what had happened during the siege, but they were largely frustrated. The only channel family members could use to challenge the state was to sue for compensation, but when they did, they were accused of trying to profit from the tragedy. In the end, the only compensation offered was to pay for the belongings of their relatives. Pavel Finogenov, who lost his brother Igor to the gas, told Borogan in an interview, “The authorities do nothing to give us even one grain of information about why our relatives were killed and who’s to blame.” Finogenov and some other family members appealed to the European Court on Human Rights in Strasbourg.“There is tremendous pressure from the highest authorities, the presidential administration, on the prosecutor’s office and all the people involved in investigating the attack,” he said.“The objective: not to give any information.”
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The relatives of the Nord-Ost victims established their own commission but said in their report, “The lack of objective legal assessment of the security services’ activities at Nord-Ost in the organization and execution of the rescue, and the hiding of facts important to investigating the events of that earlier siege, possiby led to an even more awful tragedy in Beslan.”
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In the end, no pressure was brought to bear on the Russian authorities to account for their decisions or the deaths at the Dubrovka theater. Neither the Parliament nor relatives of the victims nor the press nor the prosecutors were willing and able to carry out a full and independent investigation. The security services and the Kremlin did not want to face any such investigation—and they did not.
Two years later, after the Beslan siege, the same failure of accountability was repeated. Once again, there were calls for a parliamentary investigation. On September 7, 2004, Putin told a special press conference for foreign journalists that it would be sufficient to conduct an
internal
investigation into the tragedy. When asked about a parliamentary inquiry, he said,“Such an investigation could become the next political sideshow.”
8
But after massive protests in North Ossetia, on September 10 Putin agreed to support the creation of a commission within the Federation Council, the upper house of Parliament, to investigate the Beslan attack. A small circle of senators controlled by the Kremlin wanted to limit the investigation. But Boris Gryzlov, the speaker of the State Duma, announced that that body would create its own Commission of Inquiry into Beslan. On September 20, a parliamentary commission of eleven senators and ten deputies of the State Duma was finally formed. It was headed by Alexander Torshin, vice speaker of the Federation Council, a onetime bureaucrat in the Soviet Communist Party. The commission presented its report two years later, in December 2006. Largely, the report confirmed the official version of the siege and merely approved all changes in the national antiterrorist system. The report concluded that the security services acted correctly and took “the necessary measures to protect health and lives and to minimize the consequences of a terrorist act.” The only mistakes identified were in the organization of the operations staff on the scene (which didn’t include the president of North Ossetia) and some training issues.
Relatives of the Beslan victims demanded an independent investigation and punishment of high-ranking security officials. In September 2005, a year after the Beslan tragedy, Putin invited eight people among the families to the Kremlin for a meeting that lasted two hours and forty-five minutes. As reconstructed by the family members, they asked Putin about the responsibility of FSB director Patrushev, Interior Minister Nurgaliev, and all the law enforcement structures.
Putin was pressed by one family member, Azamat Sabanov, as to whether the security service bosses should resign. Putin acknowledged that it would be a human reaction to step down.“If I were in their place, it would have been done,” he said. However, neither Patrushev nor Nurgaliev was asked to step down.
Aneta Gadiyeva, another family member, asked Putin about the removal of Valery Andreev, who headed the operations staff at the time. “Did you remove Andreev?” she asked.
“Yes, we removed him from operational work.”
She retorted, “So why, then, was he promoted in rank and given a new position? He is now deputy head of the Academy of the FSB. What can he teach?”
When another family member again raised the question of Andreev’s fate, Putin simply replied, “I will see.”
In spite of significant public pressure, nobody in the secret services was punished for the obvious failures of coordination during the storming of the school in Beslan.
On December 27, 2005, Deputy General Prosecutor Nikolai Shepel said the investigation conducted by his office had found no mistakes in the secret services’ response to the hostage taking.
9
But the local population kept up the pressure on the authorities, and finally a few scapegoats were found: Miroslav Aidarov, Taymuras Murtazov, and Guram Dryaev, all three of whom were low-ranking local police officers. The three were accused of criminal negligence but were granted amnesty in May 2007.
10
IN JUNE 2007, the Russian National Antiterrorist Committee created a special working group, subordinate to Patrushev, to counter “the ideology of terrorism.” On April 24, 2008, Patrushev approved the plan. A copy of the plan, obtained by the authors, outlined a set of guidelines for the secret services for 2008-2012. Among the measures included in the plan was a special training course, known as “Bastion,” for journalists covering terrorism. The authors believe that the course, established by the security services, is a sort of brainwashing for journalists, aimed at limiting journalistic coverage of scenes of terrorist attacks and counterterrorism operations. Interior Ministry officials said that if a journalist has not attended the courses, he or she may be not allowed access to the area, as the number of press accreditations is limited and priority will be given to graduates of Bastion. The plan signed by Patrushev confirmed this. According to the document, the security services are required “to develop the order of accreditation of journalists who passed the courses and to establish a special diploma that would become the grounds for a journalist’s accreditation with the operations staff during the counterterrorist operation.”This requirement is at odds with the Russian law on media, in which there is no mention of the course as a prerequisite for journalistic accreditation.
In another point of the document, the FSB, foreign intelligence, and other state bodies were ordered to find an integrated response to “actions of an anti-Russia nature” carried out by the overseas propaganda centers of terrorist organizations, “including prevention of an international public tribunal on war crimes in Chechnya in Berlin.” The idea of a tribunal had been proposed by members of the German parliament in the mid-2000s.
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OVER AND OVER again, the leadership of the security services in Moscow blamed the terrorist attacks by Chechens on outsiders—on Al Qaeda, or Arab extremists who infiltrated Chechnya, or foreign intelligence services helping the insurgents. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, the FSB director stated that Chechnya was another front against Al Qaeda, and that the most horrible terrorist actions were financed by Arabs.
12
Two notorious Arab warlords who fought in Chechnya, Emir Khattab and Abu Al-Walid, were accused of organizing the apartment bombings in Moscow in September 1999.
13
Abu Al-Walid was said by the FSB to have received $4.5 million for a terrorist attack on the Moscow metro in 2004.
14
In October 2004 the FSB spokesman in the North Caucasus claimed that Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood were the main reason for hostilities in Chechnya.
15
But the focus on external enemies may have been misplaced. Arabs were present in Chechnya, but they were always subordinate to Chechens. The tactics and methods used by terrorists in Russia were largely masterminded by Shamil Basayev. Despite his undisputed skills in guerrilla warfare, his first love was hostage taking.
When in November 1991 Chechen nationalist president Dzhokhar Dudaev unilaterally declared independence, Boris Yeltsin announced a state of emergency and dispatched troops to the border of Chechnya. In response Basayev, then 26 years old, and two friends hijacked a plane that had left Mineralnyye Vody in Russia, diverted it to Ankara, and threatened to blow up the aircraft unless the state of emergency was lifted. The hijacking was resolved peacefully in Turkey, and Basayev was allowed to return safely to Chechnya. His mark was on many of the biggest attacks that followed over the next fifteen years. The most spectacular actions carried out by terrorists on Russian soil were not suicide bombings but hostage takings: the hospital in Budennovsk in 1995, the village of Pervomayskoye in 1996, the Moscow theater in 2002, and the Beslan school in 2004, all organized by Chechens.
In the early 2000s Chechen terrorists used suicide bombers, but their method was different from Al Qaeda’s: In Russia, female suicide bombers were primarily used, and would-be “martyrs” were never trained or used in pairs, as was common practice for Al Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan. The use of female
shahidas
(“black widows”) appears to have been Basayev’s tactic, predating the use of women as suicide bombers in Palestine.
e
Russian officials also seem to have shifted their definition of terrorism quite markedly in recent years, so that the effort to combat it is geared less toward preventing acts of violence aimed at civilians and more toward preserving the state against external threats.
The 1998 Russian antiterrorist law called “On Fighting Terrorism,” signed by Boris Yeltsin, defined terrorism in these terms:
Violence or the threat of violence against individuals or organizations, and also the destruction (damaging) of or threat to destroy (damage) property and other material objects, such as threatening to cause loss of life, significant damage to property, or other socially dangerous consequences and implemented with a view to violating public security, intimidating the population, or influencing the adoption of decisions advantageous to terrorists by organs of power, or satisfying their unlawful material and (or) other interests; attempts on the lives of statesmen or public figures perpetrated with a view to ending their state or other political activity or out of revenge for such activity.
16
But in 2006 a new antiterrorism law called “On Countering Terrorism” replaced the 1998 version and offered a quite different definition of terrorism:
Terrorism is an ideology of violence and practice of influence on decision making by bodies of the government, institutions of local government, or international organizations, by means of intimidation of the population and (or) other forms of illegal violent actions.
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THE NEW POLICY put a strong emphasis on terrorism as something aimed at the
state
, while the earlier policy had defined it as something directed at
civilians
. It is worth remembering that the full name of the FSB unit responsible for counterterrorism is the “Service for Defense of the Constitutional System and Combatting Terrorism,” where the term “the constitutional system” is understood as the political regime existing in the country.
In Putin’s day, with a weakened political opposition and timid press, the Russian secret services had no fear of accusing fingers being pointed at them. Putin was the only customer who had to be pleased. The chronicle of the FSB’s failures and the Kremlin’s reaction in these years followed a clear “red line”: If the failure led to human tragedy but didn’t threaten the position of the authorities, the generals were to be forgiven. However, if the same failure did endanger the authority structure, then those responsible would be found and punished, even if they occupied the highest positions in the FSB.
The Nord-Ost hostage taking of 2002 did not threaten the Kremlin’s position, and afterward FSB generals not only avoided punishment but were rewarded. Victor Zakharov, the head of the FSB department responsible for prevention of terrorist attacks in the capital, was promoted to the rank of colonel general, and FSB director Patrushev was given the country’s highest award.
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The awards streamed in so thick and fast that none of the Moscow Duma’s thirty-five members could avoid one. All were recognized in February 2003 for being “participants in the special action at Nord-Ost” at a solemn ceremony at the city council building.
19
The first award went to Yuri Luzhkov, Moscow’s mayor.
But the situation was far different when insurgents raided Ingushetia in June 2004. For a brief period, the entire region fell into the hands of Basayev’s militants. This time Putin was quick to make tough decisions: On July 19, he fired Anatoly Yezhkov, deputy director of the FSB and chief of the regional operations staff in the North Caucasus; Vyacheslav Tikhomirov, a commander of the Interior Ministry internal troops; and Mikhail Labunets, a commander of the North Caucasus internal troops.
20
Within a month Alexander Zhdankov, another high-ranking FSB general, was quietly transferred out of his post as a chief in the counterterrorism department, and by the end of 2004 the head of the local FSB department, Sergei Koryakov, was transferred to a region in Siberia.
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