A Chechen rebel web site has posted a video it says shows Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev looting an arsenal of the Interior Ministry in Ingushetia. The video claims the footage was shot during last month's nighttime assault on Ingushetia that targeted police and other law enforcement officials. In the video, the man identified as Basayev claimed he led the raid. The Kavkazcenter.com site showed a bearded man it identified as Basayev and about a dozen camouflage-clad men pulling weapons and ammunition boxes off of shelves in a building. In the poor-quality, grainy black-and-white video, Basayev claimed the building was an Interior Ministry arsenal in Ingushetia being looted on the night of June 21-22, when hundred of fighters mounted a series of brazen, coordinated raids on police posts in Ingushetia. "I express my gratitude to the leadership of Ingushetia for preserving the weapons and ammunition for us in good condition," the man identified as Basayev said. "We are taking what they have seized from us this year." The man, dressed in combat gear, was shown issuing orders to gunmen in a large room and demonstrating several pieces of weaponry. The man said he personally led a group of 570 militants to raid Nazran, Ingushetia, and that the rebels had seized 700 Kalashnikov assault rifles, 800 pistols and 1 million rounds of ammunition. Although Basayev had a foot amputated in 2000, in the video the man appeared to be quite agile.
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The video did not offer any evidence showing that the building was an Interior Ministry arsenal, or that the footage was shot on the night of the raid. "I don't know whether the video is authentic or not, but there has been a lot of cases when strange footage turned out to be authentic," said Alexei Malashenko, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center. Sergei Koryakov, director of the Federal Security Service in Ingushetia, was cited by Interfax as saying that the video "could be used as factual proof of the events that occurred." An Interior Ministry official in Ingushetia told Interfax that law enforcement agencies had received information that Basayev had led the raid before the video was posted on the web. "That Basayev was there is confirmed by the testimonies of rebels that have been arrested after the raids," the official said. |