Zakayev said the real “terrorists” were Russian troops in the republic.

MOSCOW, October 30 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Russia on Wednesday, October 30, demanded the extradition of a top aide to the rebel Chechen leadership hours after he was arrested in Denmark on suspicion of being behind a Moscow theater siege in which 119 hostages died after being gassed by Russian forces.

Senior Chechen envoy Ahmed Zakayev appeared in a Danish court Wednesday after being arrested at Russia’s request following the hostage-taking which was brought to a brutal end on Saturday when Russian forces stormed the theater.

Danish police said Zakayev is wanted as “one of the planners of the theater hostage-taking” in which Chechen fighters were demanding that Russia pull its troops out of the tiny republic of Chechnya.

Zakayev had deplored the Moscow theater hostage-taking as the “desperate act of young people” in an interview with Germany’s taz newspaper released Wednesday.

Zakayev said “the crimes of Russian forces in Chechnya do not justify an attack on women and children.”

He stopped short of an outright condemnation, insisting the hostage-taking had “nothing to do with terrorism,” and that the real “terrorists” were Russian troops in the republic.

Zakayev gave the interview to taz shortly before his arrest early Wednesday

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Valery Loshinin said Moscow hoped Denmark would “take the necessary steps” to extradite Zakayev, who was Wednesday detained in custody for 13 days until November 12, the RIA Novosti news agency reported.

Zakayev, who is an aide to Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov, has been living abroad for at least a year and was in the Danish capital for a world congress of the Chechen people.

Russia has accused Maskhadov of being behind for the 57-hour hostage-taking, although he has denied responsibility and condemned the attack in an interview with Agence France-Presse (AFP) Monday.

But the Danish ambassador to Moscow said Danish law did not allow the extradition of anyone to Russia because the country has not abolished the death penalty.

“Russia and Denmark do not have any extradition agreement, but even if they did, we cannot extradite people to those countries where there is a death penalty,” Ambassador Lars Vissing told the Moscow Echo radio.

Russia declared a moratorium on capital punishment in 1996 but has not formally abolished the death penalty.

“Despite Russia’s moves to declare a moratorium on the death penalty, the handover of a person to Russia is not a simple matter because in Russia the death penalty is still applicable,” said Vissing.

Russian Justice Minister Yury Chaika, however, said that although the death penalty is still on the books, a moratorium on executions means Zakayev could be extradited.

“Already for a long time now, since March 1996, not one condemned person in Russia has been executed. All of them have death sentences commuted to life imprisonment,” he was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

The Russian general prosecutor’s office on Wednesday conveyed a formal request asking Copenhagen to extradite Zakayev, the ITAR-TASS news agency quoted the head of the prosecutor’s office's international department as saying.

“A request was sent today through the (Russian) foreign ministry to the justice minister of the Kingdom of Denmark, Mrs Lene Espersen, after we received confirmation of (Zakayev’s) arrest” Robert Adelkhanian said.

He added that Russia would provide written guarantees to the Danish authorities that Zakayev would not face the death penalty and would granted full legal rights.

The news of Zakayev’s arrest came as two more rescued hostages died overnight bringing the number of captives who were killed to 119, the Moscow chief medical officer Andrei Seltsovsky said, quoted by Interfax.

Russian officials have said most of those who died succumbed to the effects of a gas pumped into the theater in the early hours of Saturday morning to subdue the 50 Chechen fighters who had taken the entire audience and cast hostage late Wednesday. Most of the hostage-takers also died in the assault.

Russia has so far refused to identify which gas was used to try to rescue the 800 hostages.

But U.S. officials told the New York Times that it may have been an aerosol version of Fentanyl, an opiate derivative considered a non-lethal weapon.

They said their suspicions were tentative, but Fentanyl has been likened to heroin, and the antidote Russian doctors have been using on the gas victims, Naloxone, is a prescription drug used to restore breathing to victims of heroin overdose, the paper said.

Many of the hundreds of people who were released from hospital following treatment for the after-effects of the gas have been re-admitted, Interfax reported Wednesday.

A total of 434 people have been released but 230 others, including six children, remained in hospital with 15 former hostages still in critical condition, Interfax quoted a health official as saying.

The official said that many survivors who were previously released from hospitals had returned and were being provided “with all essential aid.”

A senior U.S. official told the New York Times that if Fentanyl was used in Moscow, it would not constitute a violation of the 1997 treaty banning the use of lethal chemical weapons, because it allows the use of non-lethal chemicals for law enforcement and riot control purposes.

A former intelligence official said Soviet scientists had worked hard during the Cold War on “bio-regulators,” agents that could alter mass behavior and even put entire cities to sleep.

Despite the heavy human cost, an overwhelming majority of Russians support Putin’s handling of the crisis, a new poll showed on Wednesday.

Some 85 percent of those polled by the All-Russian Public Opinion Center in the immediate aftermath of the standoff last week said they thought Putin handled the situation very or rather positively, while only 10 percent said they thought he handled it negatively.

Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Russia is meanwhile drawing up a new national security plan that would see increased use of the armed forces in the wake of the hostage crisis.

Russia’s approach mirrors that taken by U.S. President George W. Bush after the September 11 attacks, closely involving the army in the battle against what they call “terrorism”.  

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