Death of a Dissident (52 page)

On August 16, 2002, wire reports announced that Ivan Rybkin, the former NSC secretary and speaker of the Duma, in defiance of official Kremlin policy, had met in Zurich with Maskhadov’s special envoy Akhmed Zakayev to discuss how Russia and Chechnya could jump-start the peace process. Using couriers and coded messages, preparations for the event had been kept hidden from the FSB. I met Rybkin at the Zurich airport and brought him to the Savoy Hotel, where Zakayev was already waiting.

They met as old friends. Back in 1997 the two of them had spent countless hours negotiating the postwar relationship between Chechnya and Russia—several agreements that had never materialized, thanks to the second war. Now Rybkin no longer represented the Kremlin, while Zakayev had full credentials from the rebel government. Their meeting was a slap in Putin’s face; it challenged his claim that the rebels were terrorists. Over lunch we drafted a statement: “The two sides should return to the agreement of 12 May 1997 signed by Boris Yeltsin and Aslan Maskhadov.”

Over dessert, we placed calls to the Associated Press and Radio Echo Moscow.

“I am confident that peace is possible. I know how it can be reached,” declared Rybkin. “As soon as I get back to Moscow I will
seek a meeting with President Putin to tell him how this can be done.”

“Our side is in full agreement,” added Zakayev. “President Maskhadov is ready for peace. The ball is in the Kremlin’s court.”

Of course Putin refused to meet with Rybkin. The Union of Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers endorsed Rybkin’s initiative, however, and the pressure on the Kremlin increased, from Russian elites and foreign leaders, to stop the war. Rybkin later told me that when he returned to Moscow people of all persuasions, from liberals to Communists to the military, called to congratulate him.

On August 30 it was announced that several Russian politicians, including another former Duma speaker, Ruslan Khasbulatov, and the MP-journalist Yuri Schekochihin, had met with Zakayev in Lichtenstein in the aftermath of the Zurich meeting. Next, none other than former prime minister Primakov, who was still very influential within the intelligence community, came out publicly in support of negotiations with the Chechens.

In early September Rybkin traveled to Tbilisi to meet with Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze, who endorsed his peace initiative. The Georgian trip must have particularly irritated the Kremlin: that same week, Putin sent a letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, threatening a military strike on Georgia over the Chechen presence in Pankisi Gorge.

With Boris’s support, Rybkin was planning to run in Russia’s 2004 presidential elections. His peace initiatives were a prelude to his campaign.

On October 23, I shepherded Rybkin in Washington from a meeting with Senator Richard Lugar to a lunch with the former U.S. national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. En route, we heard shocking news: a gang of Chechens led by Movsar Barayev had taken seven hundred people hostage in a Moscow theater. So much for any hope of peace.

Copenhagen, October 30, 2002: Police arrest Akhmed Zakayev, the envoy of separatist president Aslan Maskhadov, after his arrival in
the Danish capital for the opening of the World Chechen Congress. Zakayev is detained under an Interpol warrant filed by Russia, naming him as a suspect in the theater siege of the previous week. A court in Copenhagen remands Zakayev for two weeks, to give the Danish Justice Ministry time to consider the extradition request. On the same day, Russia discloses the nature of the incapacitating gas the FSB had used in the botched rescue mission. It was a secret, non-lethal weapon, an aerosol version of Valium, which was not supposed to kill anyone
.

Sasha was certain that the theater siege was another FSB conspiracy aimed at boosting Putin’s war policy and labeling the Maskhadov government as terrorists, “a new version of the apartment house bombings.” When Sasha pronounced his theory I was dismissive. But he offered a spirited argument.

“Look,” he said, “imagine you are an FSB agent named Movsar Barayev. Your oper comes to you and offers a foolproof deal. Your gang will drive to Moscow with no police interference, guaranteed; then you’ll take over the theater and mine it with dummy explosives. The Russians will negotiate and agree to a cease-fire in Chechnya. You’ll return home a hero, and get well paid for it, too. Being a dumb mountain thug, you don’t see any hidden traps. You think they really will negotiate for peace. You don’t realize they are luring your gang into their sights. So you go along with it. After all, you have done business with the FSB before.

“Then the FSB uses gas that is supposed to be nonlethal and shoots all the hostage-takers. But they screw up the gas, and lots of people die. And by the way, they pin it on Zakayev and Maskhadov; that’s their response to Rybkin and Zakayev’s meeting in Zurich.”

It was true that the terrorists did not harm the hostages. Those poor souls died mostly from suffocating on their own vomit, because no one bothered to tell the rescue teams how to handle the inhalation of a tranquilizer. Still, I wasn’t convinced.

“A typical FSB mishap, something akin to Ryazan,” Sasha
observed. “Good planning, bad execution. Otherwise it would’ve been a brilliant operation: all hostages alive, all terrorists dead.”

“One thing does not fit in your scheme,” I said. “Basayev took responsibility for the theater.”

“Basayev is bullshitting,” said Sasha. “The terrorists are dead now; for Chechens they are heroes—
shahids
. So Basayev jumped on the bandwagon.”

The theater siege greatly hurt the Chechen cause and the opponents of the war in Russia and became a PR bonanza for the Kremlin. By design or accident, it gave Putin leverage in his dialogue with the West: now, he was able to say, the Chechens had finally qualified as real terrorists, and Russia had to be viewed as a true victim of terror. The war in Chechnya should be certified as just and honorable.

Immediately after the siege, the Kremlin embarked on a concerted propaganda effort to blame the Maskhadov government for the attack. At a press conference in Moscow on October 31, Putin’s spokesman, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, played an FSB tape of a telephone conversation between the terrorists’ leader, Movsar Barayev, and one of his accomplices. On the tape the name “Aslan” can be heard; this was supposed to demonstrate that the terrorists were acting with Maskhadov’s knowledge.

Maskhadov’s government denied any role and disowned both Basayev and Barayev. Nonetheless, attacks on Maskhadov dominated the Russian message.

“We can see that the image of Maskhadov—even in the eyes of those who pushed Moscow toward negotiations—has seriously paled,” declared Yastrzhembsky. “Name one leader [in Chechnya] with whom we could negotiate. I don’t know of any such person.”

Next, they moved against Zakayev. The warrant for his arrest cited no evidence, simply the charge that he was connected to the siege. The Danish government had to decide whether or not to turn him over to Russian authorities.

An unlikely coalition rose to defend him. From Washington, a bipartisan duo of seasoned cold warriors, former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and former secretary of state Alexander
Haig, appealed to the Danish government not to extradite Zakayev. In Britain a “Save Zakayev” campaign was championed by such politically diverse personalities as the leftist actress Vanessa Red-grave and the ultraconservative author Lord Nicholas Bethel. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International issued statements in support of Zakayev.

If there was one Chechen who consistently opposed terror, it was Zakayev. But his case became a test of different things for different people: the legitimacy of Russian actions in Chechnya, the notion that Russia had failed as a democracy, the extent to which the war on terror justified compromises on human rights. For Chechens in the mountains and throughout their far-flung diaspora in Europe—and, indeed, for moderate Muslims around the world—the Zakayev case became a test of Western fairness. For Putin, it was a way to assess the reciprocity of his Western partners: in Afghanistan, we helped you fight
your
terrorists, now you have to help us to fight
ours
.

“The Danes will not send an innocent man to his death,” said Boris with his usual optimism. We were in London, discussing what to do for Zakayev. I wanted to get involved.

“When Russia slaughtered two hundred thousand civilians in Chechnya the West looked the other way. Why would they stand up to Putin over Zakayev?” I said. “He needs all the help he can get.”

For Boris, this was a serious dilemma. His asylum application was pending. Russian officials had ominously hinted that they could bring up terrorism charges against him, related to his Chechen connections. The last thing he needed was to associate himself with a man accused of terrorism. His lawyers strongly advised him to steer clear of Zakayev. His PR adviser, Lord Timothy Bell, who took it upon himself to explain what the British
really
meant, was extremely concerned: “You can’t imagine how vicious Whitehall may become if it believes that its real interests are at stake.”

But Boris sided with me: we had to put up a fight for Zakayev, both on principle and for pragmatic reasons. If we let Putin get him, Putin would come for us next.

On November 1, we announced that the IFCL would assist
Zakayev’s defense and pay for his legal expenses. Four days after our announcement Russia submitted to the United Kingdom a request to extradite Boris—on fraud charges involving his auto business.

November 4, 2002: Russia demands that Qatar extradite former Chechen president Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, claiming that he was in contact with the Moscow theater attackers. A Russian foreign ministry spokesman hails the cooperation of other Arab countries in fighting terrorism, saying, “Not a single Arab country supports the rebels in Chechnya.”

On November 9 I returned from Copenhagen to London and went to stay with Sasha and Marina in their Kensington apartment. The previous day I had accompanied Ivan Rybkin to the Danish Parliament, where he campaigned in defense of Zakayev. After the meeting, we visited Zakayev in jail. Rybkin was also putting his political reputation on the line by providing moral support to someone in custody on terrorism charges.