One of the hostage-takers who were killed by gas pumped by Russian forces into the theater

By Khaled Schmitt, IOL Germany Correspondent

BONN, December 21 (IslamOnline) – Chechen leaders told two leading German newspapers that the Moscow hostage-takers were young Chechens, both males and females, who lost members of their families at the hands of Russian troops in Chechnya.

They named, for example, Fatma, 26, and Raesa, 23, two Chechen women whose father Rashid Mangeif was among 25,000 Chechens killed in Grozny in 1995.

In an interview published Friday, December 20, by Dutech Zeitung and Frankfurter Rundschau, the Chechen leaders added that the husbands of the two women were also killed by the Russian troops in 2001.

They stressed that the Moscow hostage-taking operation on October 23 was carried out with the assistance of high-level figures in the Russian army and police.

The eight Chechen leaders, whose identities were not revealed, said that the 41 hijackers used genuine Russian passports with faked names which they had bought from Russian officials with 20,000 dollars.

The Chechen leaders did not specifically name the Russian intelligence agency, FSB, as being one of the bodies penetrated and bribed.

But the two newspapers, which enjoy major credibility, stressed it would have been impossible to obtain such a big number of passports with faked names without bribing some Russian intelligence officers.

Ever since Russian President Vladimir Putin assumed the helm of power in the Kremlin, the Russian intelligence has been closely monitoring all applications to issue passports, added the paper.

Regarding the weapons and explosives used in the Moscow theater operation, the interviewed Chechen leaders stressed that the hijackers moved them easily into Moscow stashed in trucks loaded with fruits and construction materials.

Asked about the source of the weapons, one of the Chechen leaders said they must have, as usual, bought it from Russian units operating in northern Chechnya.

They asserted that Russians sell Kalashnikov rifles for 500 dollars each and dynamite for 20 dollars.

The Chechen leaders put at around 210,000 dollars the total coast of the Moscow-hostage taking operation including weapons, passports, bribes to Russian officers and employees as well as two buses used for transportation.

They said the sum was allocated by the circle close to Chechen leader Shamil Basayev who, they argue, ordered the operation late in July.

The leader of the Chechen hostage-takers, Movsar Barayev, had told Mark Franchetti  of the British Sunday Times that he was acting on the orders of Basayev.