Bashkir binding

On the eve of the explosions in Moscow, an emergency also occurred in the Bashkir city of Oktyabrsky. Five hundred security officials tried to drive the especially dangerous international terrorist Alexander Yashin off the hospital gurney

On Saturday, March 27, the 100,000-strong Bashkir city of Oktyabrsky fell into a state of siege. The snipers took up positions at the medical unit. The riot police guarded the bus station and state institutions. The police, under the cover of BTEers, inspected cars at the exit from the city. “My husband called in the morning and told us to stay at home,” says Elvira, the administrator of a local hotel. “He said that there were terrorists in the city and special forces were coming to us from Ufa.” The city forum was inflated by rumors: it was reported that the militants seized the hospital, took hostages, and threw one of the nurses out of the window.

The next day, the Kavkaz Center separatist website reported that jihad had come to Oktyabrsky. The official comments of the Bashkir security officials were fragmentary and contradictory. The presence in the city of several hundred fighters of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSB, special forces and armored vehicles - all this was explained first by exercises, then by the capture of a gang of robbers, and, finally, by a special operation to defeat the bandit underground. On Monday, after explosions thundered in Moscow, the Bashkir security forces finally decided that they were extremists.

According to the operational headquarters, the international extremist underground led by Bashir Pliev, known as the Emir of Bashkir, was defeated in Oktyabrsky. Ten people were detained, ammunition, explosives and extremist literature were found. In a recent interview, militant leader Doku Umarov said that the Caucasian Mujahideen were determined to liberate the Volga lands. The Bashkir security officials assured Newsweek that Pliev's group had received an order - they were preparing a terrorist attack involving a suicide bomber. But in Oktyabrsky itself, these stories are not very believed.

CHAINED

In a separate ward of the medical unit of Oktyabrsky lies a thin man bandaged from head to toe. His left leg is chained to the headboard. “He doesn't say anything. Silent all the time,” explains the police sergeant, putting Newsweek correspondents into the corridor.

The name of the chained man is Alexander Yashin. According to intelligence agencies, he is a dangerous international terrorist. On March 27, Yashin, already wounded in the stomach and in the arm, for several hours alone kept the city of 100,000 in tension until he was poisoned with tear gas and neutralized by special forces.

It all started on the evening of March 23rd. Three armed men tried to rob a wholesale warehouse on the outskirts of Oktyabrsky. The raiders shot the warehouse staff with sawn-off shotguns: the driver Ramil Riyanov had his arm practically blown off by a shot, and his sister Zulfiya Mukhtarova was shot in the leg. “They didn’t have time to take anything. They ran around us and decided: to finish off or not to finish off, ”recalls Zulfiya. Later, when photos of members of Pliev's group appeared, Zulfiya identified two of the raiders - 25-year-old Nail Akhmetgareev and 27-year-old Alexander Yashin.

A former high-ranking officer of the local police department told Newsweek that the operatives first looked for criminals, not terrorists. The city of Oktyabrsky stands on the federal highway M5 on the border of Tatarstan and the Samara region. “We have racketeers, guest performers, drug couriers come across, but there have never been terrorists,” the former policeman shrugs his shoulders.

The last Bashkir extremists were liquidated two years ago. It was the so-called Uyghur-Bulgarian jamaat, whose militants planned to blow up the water intake and storage of liquid ammonia. The FSB assures that Pliev's group is not connected with these extremists: "The Jamaat was focused on Waziristan (a region on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan. - Newsweek ), and Pliev's group was oriented towards the North Caucasus."

The special services claim that the Plievites were engaged in robberies and kidnappings, however, they do not name specific crimes. As they say in the operational headquarters, the cell not only earned money for the militants in the North Caucasus, but also prepared a terrorist attack itself. What and where - also do not say. The security forces claim that they got the diary of one of the detainees - Alexander Yashin, which he kept in a training camp for militants. "There are records of sabotage and terrorist acts," the interlocutor says.

Checking operational information about the attack on the warehouse, the police found the suspects. During the arrest, Yashin opened fire on the operatives, was wounded in the arm and stomach, but managed to escape. Neither the FSB nor the Ministry of Internal Affairs can really explain how they missed the shot bandit.

TERRORIST WITHOUT FUZE

At 5:07 a.m. on March 27, an ambulance picked up a bloodied guy at the entrance to house No. 8 in the 29th microdistrict. Doctors were called by residents who heard shots on the landing. When the victim was being loaded into the car, a district police officer came up to find out what had happened. “The guy called himself Azamat Khairullin, said that he had come from Ufa to visit a friend, and they shot at him,” recalls doctor Roza Kuznetsova.

No one searched the wounded man, and the police did not follow the ambulance to the hospital. At 5.25 the man was brought to the emergency department. “He undressed in the examination room and went to the dressing room himself,” recalls nurse Alfiya Gilyazetdinova. As she ran to get the doctor, several armed operatives rushed into the waiting room.

Hearing the noise, the wounded man locked himself in the dressing room. The operatives started shooting at the door. In response, Yashin-Khairullin shouted that he would blow up the hospital. Two hours later, tear gas was fired into the room and the assault began. Several more bullets were put into Yashin, and then they covered him with shields. The RGD-5 grenade, which the sappers found on him, turned out to be without a fuse.

In Oktyabrsky, the Vulkan-3 plan was immediately introduced. The entire staff of the GOVD was raised on alarm, even employees from the personnel department were involved in the cordon of house No. 8. A whole convoy arrived from Ufa - buses with OMON, SOBR, special vehicles "Tiger" and armored personnel carriers.

Searches were in full swing in the house. The security forces said that an extremist cell settled in the apartment on the eighth floor - Nail Akhmetgareev and his wife lived there. Their neighbor, Aunt Valya, whom the investigators called as witnesses for a search, recalls that the young people were very religious. They lived poorly - two armchairs, a sofa and a mattress, a computer on the table. According to her, a box with two bullets and religious books were found in the apartment. The security forces call them extremist. Photos of the books were given to the media.

Newsweek correspondents showed these pictures to the imam of the cathedral mosque Rustem Hazrat Shakirov. “This is an Arabic language textbook, and this book is called Healing for the Heart. It's not banned," he said. Immediately after the incident, he stated that the parishioners of the mosque had nothing to do with extremists.

Local Muslims believe that the story of the October Wahhabis is strongly stretched. “Which Pliev Emir of Bashkir? He is a completely uneducated person with the manners of a criminal,” says an informed interlocutor in a Muslim environment. In the Caucasus, however, another Bashir Pliev is known - a former officer of the Internal Security Service of the Ingush Ministry of Internal Affairs, who was put on the wanted list for terrorism and possession of weapons. He was called the right hand of Basayev, and in 2005 it was reported that Pliev had been killed. According to the FSB, the Bashkir Pliev has nothing in common with the Caucasian Pliev. On Saturday, he managed to slip out of the ring, and he was detained on Monday in Chelyabinsk with a passport in a false name.

Bashkir political scientist Vladimir Savichev believes that Pliev's gang is an ordinary criminal group that could be taken by the threat police. "The security forces want to show that there is a very tense explosive situation in the republic," he said. At the same time, he has a question: if this group was developed for a long time, why was it given the opportunity to carry out an attack, as a result of which people suffered?