… AND AUSHEV PUTS FORWARD HIS VERSION OF EVENTS

Ruslan Aushev, former president of Ingushetia, continued to contradict the official version of the Beslan atrocity in an interview with the Interfax news agency published on September 28. Aushev said that the terrorists did indeed present written demands—on a sheet from a school notebook. Among the demands, he said, were “to end the war, to withdraw troops from Chechnya, that Chechnya would remain in the ruble zone, that Chechnya would be part of the CIS, that Chechnya together with federal forces would maintain order in the Caucasus and would not allow interference there by third forces.”

He said that he relayed those demands to the local headquarters of federal forces, which “was supposed to transmit them to Moscow.”

Aushev denied that the demands included the release of guerrillas captured during the June raid on Ingushetia.

Adding credibility to the theory that a number of the terrorists might have escaped, the former Ingushetian president said that they had scouted the local area during the night while under siege. The implication was that they were planning escape routes.