…DID THE RUSSIAN AUTHORITIES HAVE ADVANCE NOTICE OF THE RAID

?

This is a question that must be looked into. The October 29 issue of Moskovsky Komsomolets reported that “agents of the [Russian] special services were in [Movsar] Baraev’s band.” A man who claimed to be a representative of Russian military intelligence told a reporter for the newspaper that there were four Russian agents present among the terrorists who had seized the terrorist building. Another source in the Russian FSB “confirmed the words of the other source: Within Baraev’s group [he said] were very deeply inserted Chechen agents who had been there for a long time.” If in fact the secret services had agents among the terrorists, then why did they permit the hostagetaking incident to go forward?

In addition to this report appearing in Moskovsky Komsomolets, questions have been raised about why there were no Moscow police present outside the theater building–as required by city regulations–at the time when the terrorists arrived. And German correspondent Markus Wehner noted in the November 18 issue of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: “The FSB at the beginning spoke of fifty dead terrorists, but after several days the figure was reduced to forty-one. Where are the remaining nine terrorists?” (Russian translation in Inosmi.ru, November 20). Were some of the missing terrorists actually Russian police agents? These and related questions ought to be looked into.