Chechen TV shows video of suicide bomber

In the evening on May 18, the Grozny State TV Channel showed a part of a video, presenting suicide bomber Beslan Chagiev, who blew himself up on May 15 at the building of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) of Chechnya in Grozny.

The video shows Chagiev together with another person whose face is partially covered with a scarf. The video was made somewhere amidst a forest at the background of one of the main symbols of radical Islamists - a black flag. Chagiev pronounces threats in Russian against power officials and states that they - that is, the authorities and law enforcers - "have chosen this peace, but we'll take it away."

Ruslan Alkhanov, Interior Minister of Chechnya, has expressed his opinion that Chagiev had been trained far outside the republic, and this terror act was prepared there.

At the same time, the terror act accomplished last Friday in Grozny arose more questions than answers.

"We could understand the actions of terrorists, when they blew up the House of Government in Grozny, military commandant's offices, militia stations or, say, the terror act against Akhmat-Hadji Kadyrov. These were demonstrative actions against particular structures and officials, aimed at intimidation or liquidation of those who, in the opinion of, say, Basaev, represented danger or was an embodiment of a new reality in the republic. But what happened now can't be treated as uttermost nonsense. The idea of this self-killing action is totally unclear," one of local observers said to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

"This terror act is a real provocation aiming to demonstrate that cancellation of the counterterrorist operation (CTO) regime in Chechnya was a mistake, and it should be reintroduced," said a certain Vakhid, a former Soviet Army officer, on the occasion.