Translated material
Shadowboxing
The secret services of Karachay-Cherkessia are wondering who they spent the whole day storming
One of the central blocks of the capital of Karachay-Cherkessia, the city of Cherkessk, yesterday turned into the arena of fierce military operations, the likes of which federal forces in the North Caucasus have not had to wage for more than a year. Early in the morning, local intelligence officers discovered and blocked a group of suspected militants in one of the apartments. The bandits put up fierce resistance, which was suppressed only after a nine-hour siege with the use of armored vehicles.However, it still remains a mystery what kind of people fought with the security forces in the center of Cherkessk for almost a whole day. In the stormed, destroyed and burned apartment, the police found the body of only one militant. Another suspicious man was detained during the special operation, but whether he was related to the terrorists is also not clear. Meanwhile, at first, representatives of the special services reported that, judging by the number of “firing points,” they were resisted by at least 3-4 well-trained saboteurs.
Investigators continued to work at the battle site throughout the night, inspecting the base of the alleged militants and interviewing local residents. Only today, as expected, will the preliminary results of identifying the killed bandit be ready. Yesterday, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the republic only assumed that he turned out to be an assistant of Achemez Gochiyaev - the leader of the so-called “Muslim society No. 3”, a powerful sabotage underground, which, according to intelligence services, was responsible for terrorist attacks in the Stavropol Territory, Rostov Region, and bombings of residential buildings in Moscow and Volgodonsk in the fall of 1999 . At least local operatives said that they were hunting specifically for members of this bandit group. According to them, after the defeat of “Muslim society No. 3”, several of Gochiyaev’s accomplices who remained at large organized the so-called “Karachay jamaat” and for the last two years they have been deliberately hunting local police officers.
Events in Cherkessk began to unfold around four in the morning. It was not reported yesterday how the special services managed to reach the sabotage group. The Ministry of Internal Affairs only noted that, having discovered the terrorists, already at 5.30 the police evacuated the residents of house No. 58 on the central street of the capital of the republic - Lenin Street. Residents of neighboring houses in the same yard were warned not to leave the buildings or go near the windows. The nearby city main post office, as well as the kindergarten and secondary school No. 5 located in the same yard, also stopped working. According to employees of the Cherkessk City Department of Internal Affairs, in the morning the local police called the employees of these institutions and the parents of the children and reported that classes were cancelled.
The first shots, according to eyewitnesses, sounded around six in the morning. Immediately after the start of the shootout, traffic along Lenin Street was stopped. The militants, as reported by the republican Ministry of Internal Affairs, categorically refused to surrender and responded to all proposals for negotiations with heavy fire from machine guns and grenades. During the battle, the special forces fired at the apartment from large-caliber machine guns, and at about 8 o'clock a fire started in the house. First, the apartment from where the militants were firing back caught fire, then several neighboring ones.
For more than 9 hours, the security forces failed to break the resistance. Shots from the besieged began to subside only at 14.00, and the special forces began the decisive assault. Riot policemen blew up the door of the apartment and entered the destroyed and smoke-filled room. At the same time, by the beginning of the assault, the special services had not really figured out who exactly they were dealing with and how many bandits were there. Just based on the number of firing points, the police assumed that there were three or four criminals.
But when the police entered the apartment, they came across a wounded man who shouted that he was the owner of the apartment and the militants were holding him hostage. He was detained until the circumstances were clarified.
In the depths of the apartment, the special forces found only one corpse. The identification of the dead man is planned to take place today. Presumably this is Ruslan Tokov, one of the members of the so-called “Karachay jamaat”, who has been wanted since 2005 for the murder of seven police officers and one FSB officer in Karachaevsk at different times.
After the fire was extinguished, and the premises were examined by dog handlers with dogs for the presence of explosive devices, the inspection of the apartment continued until late in the evening. A large amount of ammunition, a machine gun and a pistol were found at the scene. According to the prosecutor of Karachay-Cherkessia Vladimir Kuznetsov, this pistol could have belonged to the deputy head of the Teberda city police department, police captain Umar Shamanov, who was killed on December 22 in Karachaevsk. The body of a 28-year-old police officer with multiple gunshot wounds was discovered in the evening in the entrance of the house where he lived.
By evening, no official statements had been made about the number of bandits and where they might have gone. The FSB Directorate of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic only reported that “in the apartment there are members of the Gochiyaev terrorist group, who were previously hiding in the mountains. Part of this group was destroyed in March in the village of Storozhevoy, Zelenchuk district of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic. The remnants of the group were hiding in the mountains, and now they came to the city and were discovered by law enforcement officers.”
Russian special services have been hunting for members of the so-called Karachay jamaat or “Muslim society No. 3” since the mid-90s. According to operational data, it appeared back in 1995. At first, members of the “society” launched active religious propaganda, but over time their sermons became more and more aggressive, and branches of the organization began to open in different parts of Karachay-Cherkessia and neighboring Kabardino-Balkaria. Achemez Gochiyaev became the imam - the spiritual leader of the “society”.
By the end of 1997 - beginning of 1998, “Muslim society No. 3” already had a clear structure, and it included about a dozen jamaats (Wahhabi communities). Its members underwent military training in Chechnya in the combat camps of Khattab or in Dagestan. The beginning of active actions by the militants of the Karachay jamaat began in 1999, when bandits carried out several acts of sabotage against local police officers, and then blew up residential buildings in Moscow and Volgodonsk. This organization is responsible for dozens of bloody terrorist attacks in Mineralnye Vody, Essentuki, Cherkessk, Stavropol Territory, Krasnodar, Voronezh. Members of the “Muslim society No. 3” were Nikolai Kipkeev, Maxim Panaryin, Tambiy Khubiev . According to the prosecutor's office, they are the organizers of the explosions committed by suicide bombers in the Moscow metro between the Avtozavodskaya and Paveletskaya stations (then 42 people were killed and 250 were injured) and at the Rizhskaya metro station in 2004. Last spring, Panaryin and Khubiev were arrested; a trial is currently underway in the Moscow City Court in which they, along with Murad Shavaev, are accused of committing several terrorist attacks.