Svetlana Gubareva's description |
Written by NovayaGazeta.Ru
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Воскресенье, 21 Март 2004 |
Page 7 of 9 On the evening of the 25th a young man, whose nerves apparently had given out, got up and started to jump over the backs of the seats. He was holding a bottle of Coca Cola. I would guess that he was about 25 years old, maybe even 29. He was in a thin, gray sweater, and wore glasses. He had been sitting in the last rows. I saw a Chechen who was sitting in a chair on the stage jump up and start shooting. I turned and looked in the direction he was firing. I saw the young man dragged down by his legs, but the gunfire had wounded a man and woman. The woman was with her husband and daughter. Her husband gave a blood-curdling shriek: «They killed her! They killed her! Liza, daughter, they killed Mommy!» The Chechens had already caught the young man, and they bent him over. They did not beat him, but they pushed him around.
Barayev, almost in a sob, asked: «Why did you do this?» The young man replied: «I wanted to be a hero, to save everyone.» Barayev asked: «What should we do with him?» Later he added: «At dawn he will be judged according to Sharia law.» The young man was taken from the hall, but there was no shooting.
Afterwards, Barayev called the Red Cross, and the police and military headquarters. No one would answer. He asked if anyone in the hall had relatives who could call representatives of the Red Cross. A girl sitting two rows below me said: «Yes, my husband works there.» He told her: «Give me the number.» She dictated it to him, and Barayev dialed it himself. He said to the phone: «Hey, get the Red Cross here. We need a surgeon.»
There was a doctor among the hostages; I only remember his first name: Igor. He did as much as he could, but said that a neurosurgeon was needed, because the wounded man had been hit in the head.
The girl who gave Barayev her husband's number yelled to him while he was talking: «Tell him that it was an accident! Tell him it was an accident, or they'll start to storm the building!» Later she took the phone from Barayev and repeated everything, that it was an accident, and not to let them try to do anything foolish, they just needed some doctors. After the call, we waited a long time for the physicians to come.
Barayev calmed down a little afterwards, and said that they would release the Americans the next day. He asked: «Who here is American?» Sandy raised his hand. They gave him a phone so that he could call the American embassy, and get them to send a representative from the embassy the next day. Sandy started to call, but the phone shut off, so I went looking for another one. Igor had the other phone, but he was busy trying to persuade the Red Cross doctors to come and help.
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