"The men had their conversations not within Russia but with other countries. They were led on a leash. Our self-styled friends have been working for several decades, I deem, to dismember Russia. They are doing a huge, really titanic job. It's clear as daylight that those people are coming up as puppeteers and are financing terror," he said to the Rossia television company, national Channel Two, tonight.
Though the bandits named certain people they wanted to see as negotiators, and Mr. Aslakhanov was among them, he is sure the terrorist gang really did not mean whatever contacts.
Aslanbek Aslakhanov, a Chechen, was on the site throughout the tragedy, and contacted the gang on the telephone. "The men were certainly not Chechens. When I spoke Chechen with them, they said they couldn't make out a word. 'Speak Russian,' they told me. Well, I did as they wished, though I speak Russian with a Caucasian accent," he said in his TV interview.
