Medvedev Seeks ‘Brutal’ Response to Terror Attacks (Update1)
By Lyubov Pronina and Anastasia Ustinova
April 1 (Bloomberg) -- President Dmitry Medvedev called for a “brutal” response to terrorism during a trip to Dagestan in Russia’s mostly Muslim North Caucasus region, where 14 people have died in bomb blasts in the last two days.
“We’ve twisted off the heads of the most odious thugs, but clearly that’s not enough,” Medvedev said during a security meeting in the regional capital Makhachkala. “We’ll find them all in a timely manner and we’ll punish them all,” he said in comments broadcast on state television. “That’s the only way.”
Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov claimed responsibility for two suicide attacks on Moscow subway stations on March 29 that killed at least 39 people. Yesterday, 12 people died in two bomb blasts in Dagestan near the border with Chechnya. Two more died in an explosion in Dagestan today.
Russia’s North Caucasus, which includes Chechnya and Dagestan, is plagued by an Islamist insurgency, the country’s highest unemployment rates and rampant corruption. Authorities linked the two female suicide bombers in Moscow to groups in the region.
Federal forces fought two wars against separatists in Chechnya after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Chechen militants were responsible for the worst single act of terrorism in Russian history, the Beslan school hostage-taking in North Ossetia in September 2004, which left 350 people dead, half of them children.
‘Secessionist War’
“Radical Islam is on the rise,” Masha Lipman, a political analyst at the Moscow Carnegie Center, said in an interview today. “Whereas Russia was dealing with a secessionist war in Chechnya in the 1990s, today it’s dealing with radical Islam and with extremists whose motto is to destroy as many infidels as possible. The local governments may be pro-Russian, pro-Moscow and loyal, but they can’t control the situation in the region.”
Terrorists have carried out 47 attacks in Dagestan this year, compared with 38 for all of 2009, Alexander Bortnikov, head of the Federal Security Service, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said during the Makhachkala meeting.
Russia lost 410 law enforcement officers in the line of duty last year, Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said. So far this year, 23 officers have died.
Authorities have identified the organizers of the Moscow and Dagestan attacks and have detained suspects in the two cases, Bortnikov said, adding that investigators confirmed that the attacks were carried out by criminal groups linked to the North Caucasus.
‘Dagger Blows’
Medvedev today issued a five-point plan for combating terrorism, starting with bolstering law enforcement agencies and delivering “sharp dagger blows” to terrorists. The government must help people who break ranks with the terrorists, develop the economy in the North Caucasus and promote morality and spiritual growth among its people, he said.
Medvedev said Russia must expand its arsenal of measures for fighting terrorism. “They must be not only more effective, but tougher, more brutal, if you like, with the goal of preventing terrorist attacks,” he said. “People must be punished for that.”
Umarov claimed responsibility for the Moscow attacks in a video posted on the Internet yesterday. In the video, which appeared on Kavkazcenter.com and other Web sites, the militant, using the name Dokka Abu Usman, called the attacks retaliations for “massacres” by Russian security services in the North Caucasus region and promised further attacks on Russian cities.
Suicide Bomber
Umarov, self-styled emir of an Islamic state stretching across Russia’s North Caucasus, is one of the last Chechen rebel leaders fighting federal forces and their local allies. He claimed responsibility for a November attack on an express train between Moscow and St. Petersburg that killed 28.
The Moscow bombings were followed yesterday by two attacks in the Dagestani city of Kizlyar, near the border with Chechnya, which involved at least one suicide bomber. Twelve people died, including nine police officers, and 23 more were wounded, according to the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General’s Office.
Today, two people died and one was injured when an “unidentified explosive device” detonated at about 12:30 a.m. in a vehicle in rural Dagestan on its way to Makhachkala, Angela Martirosova, a spokeswoman for the regional Interior Ministry, said by telephone.
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