SERGEI SNEGOV:REAL HIJACKERS MAY BE INTERROGATED IN LEFORTOVO

Daghestan’s Interior Ministry told journalists some details of the terrorist who hijacked the Tupolev 154 airliner bound for Moscow from Makhachkala. In the Interior Ministry’s version, the terrorist operated alone. He is referred to as Ahmed Amirkhanov, an extramural student at the Daghestan State University, Faculty of Law. He proves to have been unarmed, neither was there a bomb aboard the jet. However, Mr. Amirkhanov threatened to blow the airliner if his demanded were not met. He was born in 1973 in Daghestan, He is married and currently his wife is pregnant. Mr. Amirkhanov is said to have worked for a travel agency accompanying tourists abroad, in particular to the United Arab Emirats, RIA Novosti reports. He is given positive references from both his place of work and study. He is no drug addict, does not drink alcohol, nor smokes. In the meantime, Russia’s secret services seem to take pains to cover up one delicate moment. The point is that the passport details of five passengers run counter to the files at Russian Interior Ministry’s Passport Department. This means that those passengers either produced false interior passports or the latter had been issued to him bypassing Russia’s Interior Ministry. For example, as Pravda.Ru has repeatedly pointed out, in registration offices of the “independent republic Ichkeria”, sill remains necessary equipment and the cartes blanches of Russian passports. The recipients of those “clear” Russian passports normally are Chechen rebels and graduates of terrorist centres organized by Mr. Basayev and Mr. Hattab. So, it cannot be ruled out that aboard the jet airliner there were several terrorists who may be currently interrogated on the sly somewhere in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison.