Raduyev Pleads Not Guilty at Trial Opening
By Nabi Abdullaev
Staff Writer
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The Associated Press
Raduyev sitting between two other defendants, Khusein Gaisumov, left, and Aslambek Alkhuzurov at the trial on Thursday.
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MAKHACHKALA, Dagestan - Salman Raduyev, the most prominent Chechen rebel leader to be arrested and brought to trial, maintained his innocence Friday after the Dagestani Supreme Court finished reading his 700-page indictment. "Not guilty," said Raduyev when judge Baguzha Unzholov asked how he pled. Raduyev and three alleged accomplices are on trial for a hostage-taking raid on a Dagestani hospital in 1996 that left 78 people dead. Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov is leading the prosecution. Raduyev, 34, with his trademark tinted glasses and beard covering facial wounds suffered in one of several past attempts on his life, testified for more than two hours Friday. "I am not afraid of a death sentence after being blown up by mines eight times," said Raduyev, behind the steel bars of the cage that held him and three co-defendants, Turpal-Ali Atgeriyev, Aslambek Alkhuzurov and Khusein Gaisumov, who were waiting for their turn to testify. "But I cannot stand untruth," Raduyev added. Raduyev said the indictment, prepared by a joint team of investigators from the Federal Security Service and the Prosecutor General's Office, misrepresents his activities as a rebel leader. However, Raduyev said he is ready to acknowledge his guilt in particular charges, if it will please the court. Speaking about the main charge against him, relating to the 1996 hostage-taking raid at the hospital in Kizlyar, Raduyev said: "I am very interested in a deeper investigation of the Kizlyar events, because there are a lot of odious interpretations of them." Raduyev said the raid was ordered by the first Chechen president, Dzhok har Dudayev, and was conceived not as military operation but as a political and propagandist move to attract the world's attention to the conflict in Chechnya. Early on the morning of Jan. 9, 1996, 300 of Raduyev's gunmen invaded the Dagestani town Kizlyar and seized the local hospital, taking hundreds of patients and staff hostage. Dozens of civilians were shot during the daylong siege that ensued. "I don't deny that my people could be responsible, but I cannot carry personal responsibility for these casualties," said Raduyev. "In Russian law, it is called an excess of the executioner [of orders]." Raduyev said he had pulled out of Kizlyar after receiving a telephone order from Dudayev, who expressed displeasure over the civilian casualties. He said about 50 top Dagestani officials voluntarily agreed to accompany him from Kizlyar to Chechnya, to secure the rebels' passage through Dagestani territory. However, Raduyev said, despite all the accords on safe passage reached with Dagestani authorities, the rebel convoy was blocked by Russian troops near the village of Pervomaiskoye on the Dagestani-Chechen border. "I immediately let the Dagestani leaders go free when they asked for it at Pervomaiskoye," said Raduyev. "And I could have kept them hostage and saved the lives of my people then." The siege of Pervomaiskoye, where Raduyev seized local residents and a group of OMON officers from Novosibirsk, lasted for eight days before Raduyev managed to escape with his gunmen and hostages. "When Russian troops were getting ready to storm Pervomaiskoye, I told the locals and the OMON officers to stay there if they wished, but they decided to go with me," Raduyev said, adding that they feared being killed in an assault by Russian troops. He said he ordered the hostages' positioning at the rear of his group to protect them from landmines. "My own people were dying to save the hostages, as I knew that civilian casualties would bring the political effect of the raid to zero," Raduyev said. He freed the hostages the next day. Testifying about other major charges against him, which include taking a group of Perm OMON officers hostage in 1996 and ordering a bomb attack at the Pyatigorsk railroad station in 1997, Raduyev denied personal involvement in the crimes. He said they had been ordered by his aide, Vakha Dzhafarov, without his knowledge. Dzhafarov was killed in a clash with Russian troops during the second military campaign in Chechnya, Raduyev said. Explaining his numerous public statements taking responsibility for the terrorist attacks in southern Russia, Raduyev blamed the media. "The world media is not interested in information. What it needs is a sensation," Raduyev said. Raduyev, held in a detention center in downtown Makhachkala, is allowed to receive up to 10 kilograms of food a month from his relatives. In an interview with the local press last week in his one-man cell, Raduyev said he enjoyed "brotherly" treatment from jail staff and received three two-course meals a day. "One may consider it too hospitable for a man who invaded Dagestan," said the head of the republic's prison directorate, Tagir Dibirov, in an earlier interview with the local press. "But we must follow the order and treat Raduyev the same as other inmates." Meanwhile, Raduyev's three sisters and aunt appeared in the court Friday. "Salman isn't guilty, he obeyed the orders," his sister Malika told journalists. "He is not a criminal but a national hero of Chechnya," his sister Yesita added. "The trial is being held according to the law," said Raduyev's aunt Aina. "However, his indictment is a pile of false accusations." Although public protests against Raduyev had died down by Friday, security remained tight. Police kept patrolling the vicinity of the court, and snipers occupied positions on the roofs of nearby buildings.
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