Security Tight as Raduyev Trial Opens
By Nabi Abdullaev
Staff Writer
AP
MAKHACHKALA, Dagestan -- Chechen warlord Salman Raduyev, who led an audacious hostage-taking raid on a Dagestani hospital in 1996 that left 78 people dead, went on trial with three alleged accomplices amid high security in Makhachkala on Thursday.
Police were swarming around Dagestan's Supreme Court as early as 5 a.m., and late in the evening dozens of OMON officers clad in armored vests and brandishing assault rifles were waving cars and pedestrians away from the area.
Mobile phones went dead in the court's vicinity -- police had installed frequency-jamming devices around the site as a safeguard in case radio-controlled bombs had been planted there.
Although it has been declared an open trial, only journalists were permitted to attend the hearings Thursday after receiving prior accreditation from the southern republic's Information Ministry and being cleared by the local branch of the Federal Security Service.
Police officers with German shepherds guarded the court's entrance and journalists were meticulously searched with the aid of metal detectors before entering the courtroom. Inside, about 30 armed policemen stood guard, although no members of the public nor relatives of the defendants were present.
"Their relatives know that if they come, the Dagestanis will tear them to pieces," said one of the numerous prosecutors.
A team of four prosecutors from Moscow and Dagestan led by General Prosecutor Vladimir Ustinov began the proceedings right on time at 10 a.m.
"Citizens of Russia must understand that we fight terrorism not only by the power of weapons but also by the power of law," Ustinov told journalists before the opening of the proceedings.
Raduyev, 34, wearing a baseball cap and his trademark sunglasses and beard, along with three other defendants -- Turpal-Ali Atgeriyev, 31, Aslambek Alkhuzurov, 31, and Khusein Gaisumov, 25 -- were ushered into the courtroom's steel cage through a hatch in the floor.
None of them looked worried -- on the contrary, Raduyev and Atgeriyev almost appeared to ooze confidence.
They asked judge Baguzha Unzholov to strengthen their advocacy with the addition of two Chechen lawyers who they nominated. Initially, only Raduyev had a Chechen lawyer, while others were to be defended by Dagestani lawyers. Their request was granted, and the two attorneys joined the team of lawyers sitting in a row near the cage that held their clients. Raduyev's new lawyer, Lom-Ali Yakhyayev, was wearing a knee-length green silk shirt and an embroidered skullcap with tassel.
Atgeriyev, who was a deputy prime minister and minister of state security in the government of the first Chechen President Dzhokhar Dudayev, also dismissed a Chechen interpreter who was summoned for him upon his request before the trial began.
"I dismiss an interpreter as being capable to communicate in Russian," he said in a statement Thursday.
Only nine former hostages appeared in the court Thursday. According to judge Unzholov, more than 1,900 plaintiffs refused to attend the process, being unable to regularly travel the 180 kilometers between Makhachkala and Kizlyar, where the hospital raid took place.
Unzholov has presided over several recent high-profile court cases in Dagestan -- in March he convicted six men over the 1999 bombing of a military apartment building in Buinaksk that killed 58 people, sentencing two to life imprisonment; and earlier he gave life sentences to two accused of killing 20 people in an unsuccessful attempt on the life of Makhachkala Mayor Said Amirov in September 1998.
During an afternoon break in the hearing, some of Raduyev's former hostages told journalists that "the most fair punishment for Raduyev is shooting him."
"They [Raduyev's gunmen] treated us then like the fascists treated the Soviet prisoners," said Tatyana Vasilyeva, who was among the Kizlyar hospital staff seized in the raid. "Any unauthorized move meant death for us."
Upon finishing the formalities, the court began reading Raduyev's 700-page indictment.
Having enumerated numerous charges against Raduyev, a joint team of investigators from the Prosecutor General's office and Federal Security Service focused on three major events allegedly involving Raduyev.
Raduyev led 300 gunmen in seizing the hospital in the town of Kizlyar on Jan. 9, 1996. They took hundreds of patients, doctors and nurses hostage. The next day, the rebels left for Chechnya with a group of Dagestani officials and journalists who had agreed to take the places of the hostages at the hospital.
Federal troops blocked the rebels' convoy of buses near the Dagestani village of Pervomaiskoye. After an eight-day battle, Raduyev managed to escape to Chechnya with his men and the rest of the hostages.
In addition to charges over the deaths of 78 people, Raduyev's gunmen were charged with inflicting material damages of 269 billion non-redenominated rubles ($45 million).
Investigators are also charging Raduyev with disarming and taking hostage 27 Penza OMON officers who had been guarding the Gerzel checkpoint between Dagestan and Chechnya in December 1996. Their release was negotiated several days later.
In addition, Raduyev is accused of plotting and carrying out a bomb attack in April 1997 at the railroad station in Pyatigorsk, which claimed the lives of two people and injured more than 30. Raduyev, say investigators, ordered the blast and gave a radio-controlled bomb to two women, who were later arrested and convicted in Stavropol for executing the attack.
The reading of the indictment is to continue Friday.
Meanwhile, several dozen onlookers gathered on the streets near the court, despite the efforts of security officers to send people away.
"Trying Raduyev is a waste of time and of our money," said Paizat Magomedova, 55, standing in a small crowd near the courthouse.
"He should be just hanged," several other voices chimed in.
"Or given to the relatives of those killed by his gunmen in Kizlyar," said Dmitry Shabanov, 21, a student of Dagestan State University.
Others in the crowd suggested castrating Raduyev or putting him under a tank's tracks -- "to make sure that his iron head is smashed," Shabanov added, apparently referring to the titanium patches said to have been implanted in Raduyev's skull after he was severely injured in one of several attempts on his life, in which he lost one of his eyes. There are conflicting theories about who was responsible.
Although Raduyev married a relative of Dudayev and claimed to be his successor -- even calling his own gunmen the army of Dzhokhar Dudayev -- he became estranged from other rebel warlords after Dudayev's death.
Dudayev had criticized Raduyev for overstepping orders by taking civilian hostages, and Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov has often publicly condemned Raduyev for his anti-Russian statements and threats.
"When Raduyev was seized by the Russians in March 2000, many in Chechnya, even among the rebels, sighed with relief," said businessman Shamil Beno in a recent interview. Beno is a former adviser to Kremlin-appointed Chechen administration head Akhmad Kadyrov, and was also foreign minister in Dudayev's government.
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