Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [118]
That too is a fact of history. The myth of the incomparable fearlessness of the Chechen nation has been relegated to history, to the period before October 23, 2002.
In Chechnya security sweeps are proceeding incessantly. People are being tortured, suffering just as much as before. Villages have been blockaded. The zone behind the Chechnya barrier has once again been turned into a training ground for the Army. On this side of the barrier things are better, but not much.
ONE MEMBER OF THE NORD-OST TERRORIST GROUP SURVIVED: WE HAVE FOUND HIM
April 28, 2003
Six months ago there was a terrorist act at the Nord-Ost musical. Since then we have puzzled many times over how such a thing could have happened. How did they get into Moscow? Did someone allow it? Why? Now we find there is a witness, who was also a member of the terrorist group.
At first there was only the bare information that one of the group of terrorists who took the audience hostage was still alive.
We checked the information out, repeatedly analysed the list of Barayev’s group published in the press, made enquiries, and tracked him down: a man whose name is indeed officially listed with those of the other terrorists.
Were you a member of the Barayev group who took the Nord-Ost audience hostage?
Yes, I was.
Did you go into the theatre with them?
Yes.
I read an ID document with “PRESS” on its cover in capital letters on a dark background: “Khanpash Nurdyevich Terkibayev. Rossiyskaya gazeta. Special Correspondent. Pass No. 1165.” Signed Gorbenko. Sure enough, Rossiyskaya gazeta does have a director of that name.
What topics do you write about? Chechnya?
No reply.
Do you go in to work at the newspaper? What department do you work in? Who is your editor?
Again, no reply. He pretends not to understand Russian very well, but how can you be a special correspondent of the country’s main government newspaper if you don’t speak Russian? Khanpash’s narrow, mongoloid eyes, not much like those of a Chechen, register incomprehension. He is not putting it on, he genuinely does not understand what I’m talking about. He is no Russian journalist.
Was this pass given to you by someone as cover?
He smiles slyly:
I would not mind writing. I just haven’t had time yet to think about it. I only received this pass on April 7. See the date? I don’t need to go into the office, I work in the President’s Information Service.
Under Porshnev? What job do you do?
(Igor Porshnev heads the Information Service of Putin’s Presidential Administration, which should make him Khanpash’s immediate superior.) Even Porshnev’s name produces incomprehension in Rossiyskaya Gazeta’s “special correspondent.” Khanpash has no idea who Porshnev is.
When necessary I meet [Presidential Aide] Yastrzhembsky. I work for him. Here is a photograph of me with him.
Sure enough, here is Khanpash photographed with Sergey Yastrzhembsky. Sergey is looking past the camera and appears displeased. Khanpash, on the other hand, now sitting in front of me in the Sputnik Hotel on Lenin Prospect in Moscow, is looking straight into the lens, as if to say, “There! That’s us.” You can tell from the photograph how palpably unwelcome it was to Yastrzhembsky, and deduce that it was insisted upon by the man now telling me his complicated life story, punctuating the narrative with numerous photographs which he pulls from his briefcase. “That’s me and Maskhadov, me and Yastreb, me and Maskhadov again, me and Arsanov, me in the Kremlin, me and Saidullayev, me and Gil-Robles (the Council of Europe’s Human Rights Commissioner).”
I look more closely, and quite a few seem to be rather inexpert photomontage. (They were subsequently checked by specialists and this was found to be the case.) “What’s the game?” I ask. Khanpash again looks uncomprehending, rummages in the briefcase and pulls out “me with Margaret Thatcher and Maskhadov,” to show how