Category: News

Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR)
Sept 23 2004
Confusion Surrounds Beslan Band
Unanswered questions about the identity of the group who seized the
school in Beslan.
By Timur Aliev, Aslanbek Dadayev and Ruslan Zhadayev in Chechnya and
Ingushetia (CRS No. 254, 23-Sep-04)
Tagir Khachaburov lives alone in a poor whitewashed two-room house
with an overgrown front yard and ramshackle wooden gates in the
Ingush village of Galashki.
His quiet existence was shattered earlier this month by the
accusation that his 32-year-old son had been identified as probably
the most hated man in Russia. Ruslan Khachaburov, nicknamed Polkovnik
(or `Colonel’ in English) had been named as the leader of the
extremist group that seized the school in Beslan on September 1.
Tagir’s bloodshot, tear-filled eyes testify to what he has gone
through in the last three weeks. He explained to IWPR that he had not
seen his son for five years. He said Ruslan had not lived with him
since his marriage broke up when Ruslan was two and the child went to
live with his mother, an ethnic Chechen, first in the Stavropol
region of southern region, then in the Chechen village of Orekhovo.
`When he grew up Ruslan lived in the town of Oryol in Russia,’ Tagir
said. `He ran away from there after he killed two Armenians in
self-defence. After that he was on the run. He last came to see me in
1999 for a few hours. I haven’t seen him since then. When I heard
what happened in Beslan I could not believe that Ruslan could have
been there.’
`He wasn’t a terrorist,’ Tagir went on. `I still can’t believe he was
there. My son isn’t a terrorist. Our politics now is like 1937. They
can pin anything they like on a person to blacken his name.’
Khachaburov said that the Russian security services had taken all the
photographs of his two sons – his other son Bashir was a rebel
fighter and died several years ago – for their investigation into
Beslan. He said he had been constantly raided by the security
services ever since the June attack on the town of Nazran Ingushetia
by Chechen rebels, which resulted in more than 90 deaths and in which
his son’s name first came up.
Khachaburov’s neighbours suffered much more grievously. One of them,
named Beslan Arapkhanov, the father of seven children, lived on the
same street. According to research by the human rights organisation
Memorial, on the morning of July 21 a group of masked men burst into
his house and shot him dead. Then one of the gunmen pulled a
photograph from his jacket and was heard to say that `it’s not him’,
and the group left.
It seems that the group had intended to kill Ruslan Khachaburov and
had picked the wrong target.
Despite this tragedy, Musa Arapkhanov, a cousin of the dead man, told
IWPR that he had doubts that Ruslan Khachaburov had been guilty of
the charges against him and that he was an Islamic extremist or
Wahhabi.
`When he was here last year, he faithfully went to the mosque and did
the zikr [traditional Chechen prayer ritual], which the Wahhabis
don’t do,’ said Arapkhanov.
The North Ossetian authorities have issued a list of 13 names of the
group of around 30 hostage-takers who seized Beslan’s School No. 1 on
September 1. But even the identity of some of those named is not
entirely certain and some relatives are questioning the official
version of events.
Notorious Chechen warrior Shamil Basayev claimed responsibility for
the attack last week on the Islamist website Kavkaz Center, which has
since had its activity suspended.
Calling the attack `Nord-West’ in a reference to the Nord-Ost musical
which was playing at a packed Dubrovka theatre in Moscow, when it was
seized by militants in October 2002, Basayev wrote, `Thirty-three
mujahadin took part in Nord-West. Two of them were women. We prepared
four [women] but I sent two of them to Moscow on August 24. They then
boarded the two airplanes that blew up. In the group there were 12
Chechen men, two Chechen women, nine Ingush, three Russians, two
Arabs, two Ossetians, one Tartar, one Kabardinian and one Guran. The
Gurans are a people who live near Lake Baikal who are practically
Russified.’
Even before Basayev’s letter, the Russian security services had
identified several of the hostage-takers as being associated with
him.
The name of `Polkovnik’ came up from the televised account of the
only surviving hostage-taker Nur-Pasha Kulayev, alleged to have
worked for Basayev. Kulayev said, `We were collected in a wood by a
man who went by the name of Polkovnik and he said we had to seize a
school in Beslan. They told us the order came from Maskhadov and
Basayev. When we asked Polkovnik why we had to do that he replied:
because we had to unleash war across the whole of the Caucasus.’
Nur-Pasha Kulayev’s elder brother Khan-Pasha, who apparently died in
the school, was also said to have been a bodyguard of Basayev.
The parents of the two brothers live in the village of Novy Engeloi
in southeastern Chechnya. They told IWPR that the first they knew
about their sons’ apparent involvement in the Beslan tragedy was when
they saw their younger son on television news saying that he had
taken part in the school seizure and heard that their eldest had been
killed in the siege.
The parents said that Khan-Pasha had been wounded in shooting in the
village in 2001 and went to hospital. There he was suspected of being
a fighter and they did not see him for another three months. When he
came back he had his arm amputated because of gangrene and he was
psychologically disturbed.
The official version of how Kulayev was detained is somewhat
different. In August 2001, the Interfax news agency reported that he
had been seized in the village of Kurchaloi as one of three men in a
group loyal to the Saudi-born fighter Khattab.
The last time the parents saw their two sons was at the end of August
when both men were living in the Ingush village of Malgobek and their
wives had gone to visit relatives in Chechnya.
However, in a statement that, if true, casts doubt on the official
version of events, neighbours in Malgobek firmly told IWPR that the
younger of the two, Nur-Pasha, had been at home in Malgobek on
September 1, when the school siege started. The neighbours did not
want to be quoted by name.
To confuse things further Basayev said in his statement that he had
recruited both brothers to `stand on guard’.
`Everything that the man who swore by Allah that he wanted to live
[in other words Nur-Pasha Kulayev on Russian television] is not
important,’ Basayev said. `I brought the Kulayev brothers and two of
their fellow-villagers into the group at the last minute to make up
numbers at half past four on August 31 and sent them into the
operation at eight o’clock. I personally knew only Khan-Pasha
Kulayev, whose right arm was missing.’
Similar confusion surrounds the involvement of Iznaur Kodzoyev, an
Ingush believed to have been in the group. His fellow-villagers in
the Ingush settlement of Kantyshevo said he was an extreme political
and religious radical. The Ingush interior ministry has linked him to
the June attack on Ingushetia. However, Iznaur’s cousin Aslan
Kodzoyev said he saw him in Kantyshevo on September 2, the second day
of the school siege.
Finally the identity has still not been fully confirmed of the Ingush
man known as `Magas’. At first, he was believed to be a man named
Magomed Yevloyev, but now the official Russian version is that he was
in fact a former 30-year-old Ingush policeman named Ali Taziev.
According to the Ingush prosecutor’s office in 1998, Taziev was
guarding Olga Uspenskaya, the wife of Valery Fateyev, an adviser to
the Ingush president. Uspenskaya, Taziev and one other bodyguard were
snatched by gunmen and held hostage. Uspenskaya herself was freed in
2000, but not the two guards. The body of one of them was later found
and buried and Taziev was generally believed also to have died a
heroic death.
Now the authorities say they believe Taziev is in fact the very same
`Magas’, who allegedly led the raid on Nazran in June and then took
part in the school seizure in Beslan.
In the village of Nasyr-Kort near Nazran, Taziev’s mother Lida has
been sick for two weeks. `Three years ago we were already afraid he
was dead,’ she told IWPR weeping. `We held a wake for him. He can’t
be this Magas. If he was alive he would have come home.’
The work of establishing the true identities of all the
hostage-takers in Beslan has evidently only just begun.
Timur Aliev is IWPR’s Chechnya coordinator. Aslanbek Dadayev works
for Radio Liberty in Chechnya. Ruslan Zhadayev is deputy editor of
the Chechenskoe Obshchestvo newspaper.

St. Louis Today
Sept 23 2004
A HOBBY FOR HIS HONOR
By Norman Parish

Pounding the gavel is his job; making it is honored hobby
Andy Matoesian is a circuit judge and an accomplished wood carver who
is considered by at least one author to be one of the country’s best.
When Circuit Judge Andy Matoesian needs a gavel for his job, he
doesn’t have to order a new one. He simply makes it.
For more than two decades, Matoesian has made gavels for himself and
fellow Madison County judges, as well as thousands of other items
from wood, in his Edwardsville garage. He says he has made about
1,500 gavels and about 15,000 pens since the late 1960s.
Matoesian also occasionally makes furniture, bottle stoppers and
large crosses for his church – Holy Virgin Mary Armenian Church in
Swansea. His handiwork has been used by people from Illinois to
California, including a gavel in a 1993 movie, “Precious Victims.”
And James A. Jacobson, who has written about a dozen books on
woodworking, considers Matoesian as one of the best wood craftsmen in
the country.
“It is just a great hobby,” said Matoesian, 67. “I love it. I get up
at 4:30 a.m. and start working.”
Matoesian, a Granite City native, said he first learned about
woodworking as a student at Granite City High School during the
1950s. The son of a barber, Matoesian later concentrated his efforts
on barbering after graduating from Peoria Barber College in 1956.
He used his barbering skills while attending college – at Southern
Illinois University, Illinois State University and the Washington
University law school, from which he graduated in 1964. He worked for
a law firm headed by lawyer Rex Carr before being appointed a
magistrate (now associate) judge in 1965. In 1978, Matoesian was
appointed a county circuit judge. He handles civil cases.
Matoesian returned to his love of woodworking a couple of years after
he became a judge in 1965. He said he wanted a hobby in which he
could remain close to a daughter, Georgea, who suffered from
neurological problems. She died in 2002 of complications of
pneumonia.
Matoesian’s wife, Julie, works as assistant state’s attorney in child
support enforcement. Another daughter, Jane, is a lawyer in St.
Louis.
Matoesian said he now uses the woodworking to help relieve stress. He
also wants to improve.
“It is a constructive use of leisure time,” he said.
Matoesian regularly works in his garage or a large workshop room he
has assembled in his house. He admits he has more than $20,000 worth
of equipment. He usually uses walnut or cherry wood for his
creations.
Sometimes his hobby can be a little risky – such as the time he cut
his right index finger. It required about 20 stitches to close.
“You can never completely master woodworking,” Matoesian said.
But Jacobson, the woodworking author, believes Matoesian is an
expert. In fact, Jacobson said he has featured Matoesian in eight of
his books.
“It is a hobby to (Matoesian),- but he has developed it into a fine
art,” said Jacobson, a retired Southern Illinois University
Edwardsville criminal justice professor who now lives in Grand
Marais, Minn. “In my opinion, he is one of the best.”
Chief Circuit Judge Edward C. Ferguson agrees.
“I think (his gavels) are great,” said Ferguson, who adds that
Matoesian makes a two-foot-long, five-pound gavel for chief judges
when they leave their posts. “They are wonderfully crafted. It is a
wonderful skill. I wish I had it.”

ArmenPress
Sept 23 2004
DEFENSE MINISTRY DENIES PRESS REPORTS ABOUT AZERI SHOOTING ON
ARMENIAN BUS
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS: A defense ministry spokesman
denied today reports of several local dailies that a passenger bus
came under fire when traveling between Kirants and Voskepar villages
in Tavush province bordering with Azerbaijan. The dailies claimed one
passenger, a middle-aged woman, was wounded on her back.
The spokesman, Seyran Shahsuvarian, said the alleged shooting was
not confirmed either by the commander of an Armenian military unit,
guarding the border with Azerbaijan.

ArmenPress
Sept 23 2004
GRECO MONITORING COMMISSION TO VISIT ARMENIA NEXT YEAR
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS: Bagrat Yesayan, a presidential
advisor on anti-corruption issues, said September 22 that a Council
of Europe Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) monitoring
commission is coming to Armenia next January of February to assess
the country’s progress in anti-corruption struggle.
Yesayan said Armenia has been monitored by the commission since
its enrollment and has prepared answers to 128 questions, including
corruption risk assessment in different government bodies. He said
GRECO will discuss next year the monitoring commission’s report on
Armenia. Armenia joined GRECO last January becoming its 37-th member.
Speaking at a special discussion on Armenia’s progress in
anti-graft process Bagratyan said the government-designed plan of
actions to crackdown on corruption has already produced some positive
results. He singled out a law on organization and conduction of
financial inspections that has established in a clear way the list of
government organizations which have the right to do so. He said 23
inspections conducted by the finance ministry in the first six months
of this year revealed 174 million dram worth abuses part of which was
restored.
According to Bagratian, though the relevant Armenian legislation
was brought in conformity with European standards its application
still faces some problems.

ArmenPress
Sept 23 2004
AGRIBUSINESS TEACHING CENTER ATTRACTS FOREIGN STUDENTS
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS: An Agricultural
Academy-affiliated Agribusiness teaching center, run with the
financial and technical assistance of the US Department of
Agriculture Yerevan office has started teaching two more subjects,
namely International Business Law and E-Trade.
The course that lasts three years and is conducted in English has
attracted this year 60 students. Upon graduation they will be awarded
diplomas of Texas University (USA) and the Armenian Agricultural
Academy.
This year 11 students from Agricultural Universities of Tbilisi
and Batumi, Georgia, have been enrolled and next month another 100
students from India will be enrolled.

Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
Sept 23 2004
Court of Appeals acquits GLO members

On Wednesday the Court of Appeals acquitted six members of the
Garabagh Liberation Organization (GLO), including its chairman Akif
Naghi. The six activists, sentenced to 3-5 years in prison late in
August, were released from arrest in the courtroom.
However, the court found the defendants guilty and issued a two-year
suspended sentence to chairman Naghi and a one-year suspended term to
the other five GLO members. The defendants pled not guilty and said
they intend to struggle for a complete acquittal. The six GLO members
were accused of blocking traffic on the Tbilisi Avenue, breaking into
the hotel and disrupting a NATO conference underway and inflicting
damage to the hotel estimated at 1.7 million manats ($340) while
protesting against the Armenian officers’ planned participation in
NATO exercises in Baku.
The defendants rejected the charges saying that they were simply
trying to protest the Armenian officers’ planned arrival in
Azerbaijan in front of the hotel.
The previous sentence of the GLO members was condemned by Azerbaijani
public, representatives of political parties and parliament members.
President Ilham Aliyev also regarded the sentence as too harsh.*

Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
Sept 23 2004
S Caucasus PA not to be set up unless Upper Garabagh conflict is
settled, says Vice Speaker

Baku, September 22, AssA-Irada
Vice Speaker of the Milli Majlis (parliament) Ziyafat Asgarov
received Denis Sammit, executive director of the London Information
Network on State Building and Conflicts, on Wednesday.
Asgarov said that he has been informed about the proposal made by the
Network to establish the Parliamentary Assembly of South Caucasus
countries.
Noting that this is impossible unless the Upper Garabagh conflict is
settled, the Vice Speaker directly blamed the leadership of Armenia
for failure to solve the conflict. `How can we set up a Parliamentary
Assembly together with a terrorist state?’, underscored Asgarov,
stating that no relations will be established between Azerbaijan and
Armenia until the conflict is settled. Sammit, in turn, said that
there is a very complicated situation in South Caucasus due to
ongoing conflicts. Stating that he understands well international
organizations’ failure to settle the conflict, Sammit advised the
governments of the two conflicting sides to make joint efforts with
international organizations and NGOs in this respect.*

Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
Sept 23 2004
Armenian FM criticizes PACE report on Upper Garabagh

Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanian said he was dissatisfied
with the report presented by the former rapporteur of the Parliament
Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on Upper Garabagh, head of
the British delegation in the PACE, Terry Davis.
`It is unacceptable for Armenia’, Oskanian said.
The Armenian minister said he has no hopes for the new rapporteur,
Englishman David Atkinson, either. Oskanian said he was aware of
Great Britain’s position on the territorial integrity issue but added
that `the Armenian side is already studying the matter’.
Terry Davis was appointed as rapporteur on Upper Garabagh at the PACE
summer session in 2002, and as the Council of Europe Secretary
General in June 2004.
The PACE Political Committee heard the report on Upper Garabagh
presented by Davis in Paris on September 14, 2004. On the same day,
British parliament member David Atkinson was appointed as the new
rapporteur on Upper Garabagh. Atkinson has already expressed his
intention to meet with the conflicting parties. The date for his
arrival in the South Caucasus region has not been reported yet.*

The Times (London)
September 23, 2004, Thursday
A warmly surreal love story set in a post-Soviet village pleases
Wendy Ide
by Wendy Ide
VODKA LEMON. PG, 89 mins ***
SAVE THE GREEN PLANET. 18, 116 mins **
SWITCHBLADE ROMANCE. 18, 85 mins **
RED LIGHTS. 15, 105 mins ***
THE ISTER. N/C, 190 mins *
There is a tendency for films such as the Kurdish Armenian Vodka
Lemon to be dismissed as little more than a glorified ethnographic
show-and-tell, a charming novelty in elk-fur peasant garb. The Story
of the Weeping Camel from Mongolia suffered this fate at the hands of
some British critics earlier this year. The problem is that the
attitude directed towards films from small, poor, less newsworthy
countries can be rather patronising.
In fact, films from countries without a developed film-making
infrastructure can be far more interesting than those with a weighty
cinema history that dictates how and how not to make films.
Vodka Lemon merrily makes its own narrative rules, layering
colourfully surreal vignettes (there’s a definite flavour of Emir
Kusterica’s anarchic Gypsy communities) and bittersweet Armenian
in-jokes with a gentle, rather lovely autumn romance between a
widowed former army officer and the woman he glimpses each day at the
frost-bound cemetery.
The story is set in a Kurdish mountain village that is still
suffering the transition from Soviet occupation to free market. Of
course, a free market works only if you have money to buy things, and
the villagers are forced to barter their remaining sticks of
furniture and hope for an envelope filled with cash from the one
village son who made it to the West. It’s not nearly as bleak as it
sounds – there’s a specific kind of humour that thrives in the face
of extreme privation and Vodka Lemon has it in spades.
Another week, another piece of graphic Korean nastiness. At the heart
of Save the Green Planet (pictured above) is an interesting premise
-a businessman is kidnapped by a dangerous young criminal, but
instead of a ransom, the kidnapper wants an admission that the
businessman is in fact an alien from Andromeda, and that a visit from
an extraterrestrial prince is imminent.
It’s shot with a macabre visual elan and snappily edited, but the
extended torture sequences try the endurance and sit uncomfortably
with the rather juvenile tone of the film. Another problem is that
the writer-director, Jang Jun Hwan, doesn’t seem to know how to end
his film. It drags on for a good 30 minutes longer than it needs to,
bolstered by a montage of humanity’s worst atrocities -somewhat
disingenuous in a film that presents torture as entertainment.
More gore, this time from France, in the strangely titled Switchblade
Romance.
This is an old-school horror flick, in the sense that the gouging and
slashing and bludgeoning with barbed-wire wrapped cudgels is not
mitigated with humour, postmodern self-awareness or pop-cultural
references.
Die-hard horror aficionados will probably consider this a return to a
purist slasher-movie ethos. More sensitive souls will have a hard
time coping with its unremitting grisliness. There’s a strong central
performance, however, from the rising star Cecile De France, last
seen in the lamentable Around the World in Eighty Days. If only she
had wielded her barbed-wire cudgel where it was really needed.
Cedric Kahn’s latest film, Red Lights, is adapted from a novel that
Georges Simenon wrote in the 1950s. It was thematically ahead of its
time -Kahn (see interview, page 6) has moved this exploration of male
status anxiety to the present day and it works well.
An excellent performance from Jean-Pierre Darroussin is the driving
force in what could be described as a psychological drama, a road
movie and a thriller. He plays a rather pathetic little man whose ego
won’t let him accept the fact that he is an unremarkable accountant
while his wife (an icily indifferent Carole Bouquet) is a high-flying
lawyer.
This anger festers during a long, night-time car journey and he
sneaks illicit drinks along the way as small acts of rebellion. After
a confrontation, she decides to proceed alone and the night becomes a
darker and more dangerous place for both of them.
It’s hard to imagine a more specialist-interest film than The Ister,
a three hour documentary that riffs on a series of lectures delivered
by the philosopher Heidegger in 1942. And I’m afraid I lost interest
in this terminally dull film pretty quickly.
For this to succeed, it would need to be both visually striking and
accessible.
The Ister fails on both counts.

Insurance Day
September 23, 2004
IN BRIEF
Armenians on board
CALIFORNIA insurance commissioner John Garamendi has made three
appointments to the Armenian Insurance Settlement Fund Board. The new
board members Viken Manjikian, Paul Krekorian, and Berj Boyajian will
evaluate claims against New York Life Insurance Co, relating to the
settlement of a class-action lawsuit on behalf of heirs and
descendants of policyholders who were killed in the Armenian genocide
more than 90 years ago. Mr Garamendi secured a $20m fund to help make
payment of claims in this case earlier this year, following a
compromise by New York Life. The settlement relates to an estimated
2,300 policies sold by the insurer to Armenians living in the Ottoman
Empire in the late 1800s and early 1900s. From April 1915 onwards,
many of these policyholders were among the 1.5m slaughtered in
attacks on Armenians within the empire.