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Russia's
secrecy on gas cost lives, says U.S. ambassador
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MOSCOW,
October 30 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Russian security forces
arrested Tuesday, October 29, thirty Russian citizens - including
several security officers - on suspicion of helping the Chechen fighters
who took 800 people hostage in a Moscow theater and demanded an end to
the bloody Russian war in Chechnya.
The
suspects include security officials and political advisers, accused of
having allegedly colluded with the Chechen hostage-takers, who stormed
the packed theater last week demanding the withdrawal of Russian forces
from Chechnya, BBC News Online reported.
Russian
media have been reporting that the Chechen fighters were briefed by
security insiders about the authorities' handling of the crisis.
In
an operation described as "callous", Russian special forces
stormed the theater after pumping a controversial debilitating gas,
killing at least 113 hostages and shooting dead most of the
independence-seeking fighters.
Russian
Interior Minister, Boris Gryzlov, said his forces were involved in an
"unprecedented operation" to identify a network of helpers in
Moscow and the surrounding.
A
government source, who confirmed to the BBC that security officials were
among those arrested, said there had been far too many self-appointed
'helpers' milling about at the rescue headquarters.
A
government-sponsored newspaper reported that the Chechen fighters had
been briefed about what was going on outside by what it described as an
"analytical center".
The
center was collecting information from various sources - including the
rescue headquarters - processing it and sending instructions to the
fighters.
A
former commander of an elite special forces unit has also been quoted as
saying that civil servants and security forces collaborators
"helped the Chechen fighters to rent premises to store arms and
explosives".
Liberal
members of parliament are demanding an inquiry into the way the crisis
was handled - in reference to the cold-blooded way in which Russian
authorities opted to end the hostage-taking crisis.
The
Russian military has also intensified its war on independence fighters
in Chechnya itself, with reports that around 100 Chechens had been
detained in the republic in the past 24 hours.
On
Tuesday, Chechen fighters downed a Russian helicopter near the main
military base outside the capital Grozny, killing all four on board.
Questions
are still being asked about the gas that Russian forces used to end the
hostage-taking crisis - reportedly a kind of bio or chemical weapon
developed by Russia during the Cold War. But Russian authorities have
refused to identify the gas which claimed the lives of at least 113
hostages.
Slamming
the secrecy surrounding the gas, U.S. Ambassador in Moscow Alexander
Vershbow stressed Tuesday that if medical workers had a little more
information about the gas, a few more hostages might have survived.
He
criticized Russia's refusal to name the gas it used, which proved
poisonous, saying the secrecy cost lives.
Medical
experts in Germany say siege victims being treated in Munich have shown
traces of halothane in their blood and urine - an anesthetic now rarely
used in west European hospitals.
Earlier,
the U.S. embassy in Moscow said its physicians believed the opium-based
gas fentanyl was pumped into the theater.
The
BBC's Jonathan Charles in Moscow says the high death toll continues to
make the raid controversial, but the strategy is now being studied by
foreign intelligence agencies.
They
are examining whether the deployment of gas might prove helpful if they
are ever faced with similar sieges.
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