By Sergey Buntman

Radio Echo of Moscow, on the program “We’re looking for the exit”

SERGEY BUNTMAN: Good evening, this is Sergey Buntman on the microphone and today “we’re looking for the exit”. How and in what way can one negotiate with terrorists and with terrorist organizations that take hostages? Our reason for discussing this is the possible agreement on exchanging the Israeli corporal, Gelad Shalit, for 450 Palestinian prisoners. This is an absolute trade – they are paying with these prisoners through middlemen from Egypt, and there’s a chance that in six months Gelad Shalit will be returned. Today we’re going to discuss, of course, much more than just the Israeli situation, and our guests are Anatoly Yermolin, Member of Parliament and former chief of a combat operational unit of ‘Vimpel’. (Trans note: ‘Vimpel’ and ‘Alfa’ are FSB’s special weapons units similar to the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team.)

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The Moscow Theatre Siege — transcript

NARRATOR (JACK FORTUNE): A year ago in Moscow terrorists took a thousand people hostage and threatened to kill them. The Russians problem was how to get them out, alive.

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By Andrey Romanov

In ‘Noviy Region’

Victims of the terror attacks on the theatrical center at Dubrovka, Beslan, and the Moscow-Volga airline crash intend to travel to 30 regions in Russia in order to meet with the public. Representatives of the ‘Nord-Ost’ public organization for cooperative defense of victims of terror acts declared today at a press conference in Moscow that the aim of this action is to draw the public’s and the authorities’ attention to cases regarding these terror acts.

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Early yesterday morning soldiers from the ‘Alpha’ special operations unit stormed the theatrical center at Dubrovka, where Movsar Barayev’s group of suicide martyrs was holding 800 hostages. The terrorists were destroyed and a majority of the hostages ended up hospitalized. The leadership of the special operation judged it to be a ‘B+’. Its long-term consequences, however, have turned out to be dramatic: the gas used by the special forces killed many more hostages than the terrorists did.

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From Rossiyskaya Gazeta, October 28th, 2002

Fifty-eight hours

That is how long the nightmare on Melnikov Street in Moscow kept the entire nation on edge

Wednesday, October 23rd

9:15 p.m.  A group of armed militants in camouflage enter the theatrical center at Dubrovka, on Number 7 Melnikov Street, what was formerly known as the Palace of Culture (DK) of the government bearings plant.  The theater is variously referred to as ‘Nord-Ost’ (from the musical being performed in the theater at the time), Dubrovka, or simply ‘DK’.  More than 800 people are watching the musical at the time.

In Sueddeutsche Zeitung

“I dream of repeating what my brother did.” Their sons, brothers, and sisters held all of Russia in fear for several days. Why are the relatives of the terrorists who seized hostages in Moscow ready to do it again?

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