Russia's Federal Security service said Thursday it foiled planned terror attacks ahead of Victory in Europe celebrations, discovering a truck packed with more than a ton of explosives and a cache of poisons allegedly intended for chemical attacks.VE Day blasts are a Chechen/Wahabi tradition. Last year the Chechen president and 25 others were killed during VE day celebrations. In 2002, 40-some people were killed in Kaspiisk, Daghestan when a remote controlled bomb exploded during a VE day parade.
The truck was found near the Chechen capital of Grozny, said Maj. Gen. Ilya Shabalkin, chief spokesman for the federal forces in the North Caucasus region. Its frame and chassis were outfitted with about 2,600 pounds of explosives
Looking to up the ante by two orders of magnitude.
for an attack allegedly planned by Chechen rebel leaders Shamil Basayev, Doku Umarov and Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev — the successor to slain rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov. The truck was discovered on a road Thursday morning, Shabalkin said.
Security services have been on watch for major terrorist attacks around Monday's holiday, which this year marks the 60th anniversary of the Allied victory over the Nazis in Europe. It is one of the biggest holidays on the Russian calendar. Militants have struck twice in the past on the holiday, killing Kremlin-backed Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov [sic: they mean Kadyrov, but this is written by AP and all those Russer names sound alike] and up to 24 others attending a Grozny parade last year, and killing 43 people by bombing a parade in the southern Russian town of Kaspiisk in 2002. "The truck was fully prepared for a blast, the only thing left to do was to put a suicide-bomber behind the wheel and turn on the electric detonator," Shabalkin was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency. He said two men who drove the truck were detained and were being interrogated.
The Federal Security Service also said rebel leaders planned to use poisons and toxic substances for attacks in the capitals of the North Caucasus region and several large regional centers elsewhere in Russia. A cache containing a cyanide-based substance was discovered during combat in an unnamed settlement on the Chechen-Ingush border, said a statement from the Federal Security Service's press service. The components, which are not produced in Russia or elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, were brought in from abroad — possibly an Arab state, the service said. "Experts have concluded that the application of these strong-acting poisons in minimal doses in crowded places, in vital enterprises and water reservoirs could produce numerous victims," the security service said. It said less than an ounce of the poison could kill about 100 people.
The security service said a militant group operating in the Russian republic of Ingushetia, which borders Chechnya, was involved in the planned chemical attacks. The main organizer was a Jordanian named Abu Majahid, who arrived in Chechnya in 1992 and served as an emissary of al-Qaida, it said. The attack was to have been carried out by the so-called Amanat (Silence) jamaat, a group of adherents to the extremist Wahhabi branch of Islam, the security service said. The group is headed by Alash Daudov, a former police official accused of complicity in the 2002 Chechen rebel seizure of a Moscow theater that left 129 hostages dead, attacks on police in Grozny and Nazran in neighboring Ingushetia in summer 2004 and the rebels' seizure of more than 1,200 people in a southern Russia school in September, it said. The security service alleged that Daudov received the poisons from an Arab state, through Abu Mujahid.