"I know that he's dangerous," said Nurdi Doklayev, a Nazran city investigator who examined the June raids. "All the adjectives -- cruel, bad, angry -- could fit this guy because he's killing people."
Authorities said they first heard the name Magas after an assassination attempt in April against Ingushetia's president, Murat Zyazikov, and began trying to determine who he was. "Until recently, Magas was a big mystery to us," Apiyev said.
In Beslan, family and friends buried the victims of the school siege as rain poured down on mourners and gravediggers. Funeral processions arrived one after another, with as many as five people buried at the same time.
(Ivan Sekretarev -- AP)
|
_____Photo Gallery_____
•
Russia Begins Burying Victims: Funeral processions in Beslan on Monday moved one after another for the hundreds who died in the Russian school hostage crisis.
•
Photos: Standoff Ends
_____Hostage Standoff Ends_____
•
Photo Gallery: The hostage standoff at a school near Chechnya turned tragic with hundreds of children and adults killed or injured during fighting.
|
| |
_____More From The Post_____
•
Putin Angered By Critics On Siege (The Washington Post, Sep 8, 2004)
•
Old Animosities Boil Anew In Wake of School Tragedy (The Washington Post, Sep 8, 2004)
•
Under a 'Crying' Sky, Beslan's Dead Are Laid to Rest (The Washington Post, Sep 7, 2004)
•
Russia Admits It Lied On Crisis (The Washington Post, Sep 6, 2004)
•
A Gruesome Tour Inside School No. 1 (The Washington Post, Sep 6, 2004)
|
| |
|
At first, authorities thought his real name was Magomed Yevloyev. A man by that name was killed in the town of Malgobek, and the military spokesman, Shabalkin, declared then that he had "no doubt" Magas was dead. But it turned out the dead man was an unrelated murder suspect with the same name.
Then another suspect named Magomed Yevloyev was killed, this time in Galashki, but he, too, proved not to be Magas.
Authorities said Monday that they have now identified Magas as Ali Taziyev, 30, an Ingush police officer who disappeared in 1998. "He is Magas," said Dzhabrail Kostoyev, the region's first deputy interior minister. "For a long time we had him recorded as a loss. And all of a sudden he came to the surface in recent events."
Police raided Taziyev's family home in Nazran on Sunday, bringing in metal detectors and trained dogs to search for weapons for five hours. In an interview at the house Monday, his relatives rejected the idea that Taziyev was Magas and said they believed he was killed years ago. "If he was alive, he would have sent us a letter, something," his brother Aslan said.
The seventh of 10 children, Taziyev disappeared on Oct. 10, 1998, while he was working as a guard for a local official. He and another police officer were escorting the official's wife around a market when the three were kidnapped by Chechens, according to relatives and police. The wife was ransomed late in 1999, the other officer's body was found in 2000 and the still-missing Taziyev was officially declared dead in 2001.
Officials at his old ministry now say they believe he may have already been working with the Chechens at the time of the kidnapping and helped stage it or went over to their side after being taken prisoner. "Either he was interested in money or was under threat of death regularly and later probably he was zombied," Apiyev said.
Taziyev would not be the only police officer to switch sides. Several of the 30 people arrested after the June raids here were members of the local militia, including a captain from internal affairs who allegedly helped the guerrillas get into the region to begin their attack.
Officials said militants increasingly have been recruiting in Ingushetia. "They all gather underground," Girikhan Khazbiyev, a local prosecutor, said. "They live among us. They're here. At the necessary moment, they get together and act."
Glasser reported from Moscow.
