| Chechen special services eliminated Grozny's "main saboteur" Chechen special services yesterday announced the destruction of the famous field commander Supyan Arsanukaev, considered the organizer of most of the major terrorist attacks in recent years. According to the investigation, it was he who carried out the explosion in the village of Znamenskoye (Nadterechny district of Chechnya) on July 19 of this year. Then 15 people died, 10 of whom were operatives and heads of the local police department, and one employee of the FSB. Also, according to intelligence services, Arsanukaev developed almost all the latest sabotage in Grozny and its environs and was involved in the explosions of Tu-134 and Tu-154 aircraft in August last year. As a result of this special operation, Arsanukaev’s wife was also detained; according to counterintelligence officers, she was involved in the recruitment of female suicide bombers.
The fact that Arsanukaev not only planned the terrorist attack in Znamensky, but also pressed the remote control button himself, blowing up a UAZ loaded with explosives, was told to the special services by the direct perpetrators of this terrorist attack. Militants Ayub Tuntuev, Aslanbek Vitrigov and Ali Agamirzaev were detained by operatives two weeks after the terrorist attack, and they began to confess. However, Arsanukaev had been under suspicion for a long time. According to the intelligence services, the 30-year-old native of the village of Pobedinskoye (Grozny district), the son of a rural teacher, began his “career” in the ranks of the separatists in 1994. Soon after the start of hostilities, he went to the mountains and became a guard for the former “Vice President of Ichkeria” Vakha Arsanov. (According to the Chechen Ministry of Internal Affairs, Arsanov himself was killed in December 1994.)
Then Arsanukaev ended up in the gang of Khozh-Baudin Dushaev, whose militants, according to the FSB, organized terrorist attacks at the Wings rock festival and at the Mon cafe on Tverskaya Street in Moscow in the summer of 2003. It is known about Dushaev himself that he was Shamil Basayev’s personal guarantor. At the end of the 90s, according to operatives, three of his brothers joined Arsanukaev, and later he managed to gather several more people around him and began to organize sabotage on his own.
In particular, according to operational data, Arsanukaev and his militants were involved in the murder of the head of the Nadterechny district, Akhmed Zavgaev, in 2002, and in the terrorist attack on May 12, 2003 in the village of Znamenskoye (then suicide bombers blew up a KamAZ truck filled with TNT, killing 60 people , more than 250 were injured), to the attack on Grozny last August. According to the special services, in recent weeks Arsanukaev has been preparing a new large-scale terrorist attack. On his instructions, in the twentieth of September, the militants bought two Zhiguli cars, one of which was stuffed with explosives. Having learned about this, on September 27, in the area of the village of Pobedinskoye, officers of the Chechen FSB intercepted and blocked this car. The three militants in it were killed, and Arsanukaev managed to escape in another car. In the Zhiguli, in the back seat, explosives experts found a canister filled with saltpeter and aluminum powder, two 400-gram TNT blocks, 120 kg of bolts and nuts and two remote controls. According to experts, the power of this device was 80 kg of TNT equivalent.
After this skirmish, counterintelligence officers were literally on the heels of Arsanukaev and his gang. Last Friday, operatives of the FSB and the Gortsy anti-terrorist center overtook militants near the village of Terskoye, Grozny district. Two bandits were killed, and Arsanukaev, although wounded in both legs, forded the Terek and disappeared again. The decisive battle took place on Sunday evening. Detectives received information that the terrorist and his wife rented one of the private houses in the Oktyabrsky district of Grozny. As it later turned out during the search, Arsanukaev tried to self-medicate there; in addition to weapons, a lot of dressings, painkillers and antiseptics were found in the house. The militant did not surrender and was shot at the moment when, having pulled the pin, he was about to throw a grenade.
Two other men were also detained at the house. Whether they were part of Arsanukaev’s gang or simply helped him hide is still being clarified. But detectives know quite a lot about the field commander’s wife, Burema Zuraeva, who was also taken during the special operation. According to the intelligence services, she was recruiting among Chechen women those who could become suicide bombers and, according to some sources, together with her husband, she participated in the training of terrorists who blew up Tu-134 and Tu-154 planes on August 26, 2004, resulting in the deaths of 90 people - all passengers and crew members. Tatiana GRITSENKO |
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