1. LACK OF EFFICIENT PREVENTIVE MEASURES AGAINST TERRORISM

Inefficiency of Russian national security agencies was revealed in the horrible, bloody and inhuman practice. The constantly increasing number of terrorist attacks, explosions, acts of sabotage evidently show that their work is not satisfactory (Appendix 1).

These events were preceded by two official reports of Movsar Barayev’s death: 

August 25, 2001 — it was announced that he offered armed resistance while being arrested, and was killed in the course of that special operation (Appendix 7);

October 12, 2002, Deputy Commander-in-Chief for Chechnya Boris Podoprigora declared another time that Barayev had been killed by pinpoint shots of Russian artillery and air force (Appendix 8), nevertheless 11 days later, on October 23, 2002, it was Barayev with a group of armed terrorists, who seized the “Nord-Ost”.

It was not just a single week’s time and not just a single man’s efforts that were needed to prepare such a large-scale attack. It was a challenging problem for the terrorists to think out the whole operation, to select those who were to take part in it and to keep everything in total secret. And they brilliantly succeeded in that.

“The tragedy with captured hostages, that keeps the entire Russia in an emotional stress, is more than a tragedy… It is a major failure of national security bodies. And at the same time there is hardly any other country in the western community, where security services and police may enjoy such wide range of powers as in Russia (“Die Welt” newspaper, Germany).

Thus, a theater watchman who had been taken hostage recognized among the terrorists one of the workers who had been repairing a gay-club that was located in the basement of the Theater Center. The investigation supposed that the quarters of the gay-club had been used as a preparation base for the attack, because its premises were “strongly protected against inspections of law-enforcement authorities”, for “there were many influential representatives of … power structures among the members and customers of the club. Taking into consideration the foregoing, the gay-club was a most ideal base for preparing and undertaking the terrorist attack” (Appendix 2).

The authors know nothing of the results of investigation into the above version.