Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [123]
Terkibayev lived for much of this year in Baku, where things got so bad for him that he had no option but to move. Sooner or later Basayev’s people would have eliminated him, so he moved to Chechnya. This was a step born of desperation, putting his head in the tiger’s mouth. The federal forces now had no time for him, and he had no other source of support. The car accident followed.
What is the most important aspect of this? Historically, as everybody knows, double and triple agents end up getting murdered. For us, however, this only makes things worse. Terkibayev never was questioned, and accordingly one further fragile link in the chain leading to the truth about Nord-Ost has been broken. He took with him information which ought to be known to everyone in Russia, the answers to fundamental questions about Nord-Ost to which we, thanks to the efforts of those at the top of the political pyramid, have no answers. Who supported Barayev’s unit in Moscow? (We are not talking here about corrupt officials issuing visas, although, ironically, some are facing trial this very week.)
How did Barayev’s people get into Moscow at all? How were preparations for a terrorist attack in Moscow made? Who was Terkibayev’s controller in the secret services, and in which one? Why was there an assault? Why were negotiations which had some prospect of success in getting the hostages released terminated? Who was involved in taking such criminal decisions?
If we reduce these questions to their lowest common denominator, they indicate something we all suspect but cannot prove: that this was a managed act of terrorism in which Barayev was manipulated, and in which the female suicide bombers in black who accompanied him were dupes.
One important detail for anyone interested in receiving accurate information is that not only was Terkibayev not questioned by the members of the official Nord-Ost inquiry, he was even ignored by the members of the Public Commission of Inquiry, which does exist, although it is so inactive that it might as well not.
The timing of the car accident is also revealing: Terkibayev might have been about to open his mouth. The CIA was taking an interest in him. CIA agents were (quite properly) conducting their own inquiry into the death of an American citizen who had been among the audience, and had been signalling that Terkibayev was of interest to them as a source of evidence. (This may also have been a reason for Terkibayev’s move from Baku; in Baku he was accessible to the CIA, while in Chechnya he was probably not.)
Where does that leave us? “The agent must not be allowed to talk,” and Terkibayev has been duly silenced.
That is the main surmise about the causes of the car accident. Nobody will ever be able to prove that it was a genuine accident. Even if it was, nobody would believe it.
More generally, in the now eternal absence of Terkibayev the unquestioned and liquidated, I personally will never believe that the secret services are not involved in organising terrorist acts. They have done everything they could to torment me with the belief that they are. If there is another hostage-taking, the first question that will spring to mind will be, who is behind it? Which of those supposed to protect us are actually orchestrating the terrorists?
ONE MONTH BEFORE THE NORD-OST INQUIRY ENDS, THE STATE AUTHORITIES BURY ANSWERS TO THE MAIN QUESTIONS, AND THROW TRUTH TO THE WINDS
January 19, 2004
At the end of a two-hour meeting [between the head of the official investigation into the Nord-Ost hostage-taking and victims and relatives], I had to intervene and remind Mr Vladimir Kalchuk about the truth of the Terkibayev affair.
His reaction was bizarre. He told me to get lost and to stop writing to him, otherwise he would “hint” to the Nord-Ost victims that my son’s mobile telephone number had been discovered in the memory of the phone the terrorists were using, “and then we will see what they will do to you. They may well