THIS is PRICELESS!

Saddam the humanitarian...NOT.


http://www.msnbc.com/news/824951.asp


Chechens threaten to shoot hostages

8 kids released; Saddam urges militants to free hundreds held in Moscow theater Meantime, in an unusual intervention, Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein called on the Chechens to release the hostages, claiming the United States and Israel were the real enemies of Muslims.

NBC, MSNBC AND NEWS SERVICES

MOSCOW, Oct. 25 — Chechen rebels holding hundreds of hostages in a Moscow theater are threatening to shoot hostages at dawn on Saturday if their demands are not met, said a spokesman for the Russian command center and a spokeswoman for the theater on Friday. News of the threat came as the guerrillas released 19 people, including eight children. Meantime, in an unusual intervention, Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein called on the Chechens to release the hostages, claiming the United States and Israel were the real enemies of Muslims.

THE CHECHENS, who have demanded that Russian forces withdraw from their southern homeland, have freed at least 60 people and have killed one person since storming the popular theater during a show late Wednesday.
The rebels’ threat to kill the captives was relayed Friday in a cell phone call from a captive, said Daria Morgunova, a spokeswoman for the theater where the hostages were seized Wednesday night as they watched a popular musical. The sun rises in Moscow about midnight EDT.
About two hours later, Nikolai Patrushev, head of the Federal Security Service, said the approximately 50 rebels’ lives would be guaranteed if they freed all hostages — including 30 children and 75 foreigners.
Patrushev made the Russian offer after a meeting with President Vladimir Putin, who was later quoted as saying the Kremlin was “open for any contacts.”

“We are conducting talks and will conduct talks, hoping that they will bring positive results in freeing the hostages,” Patrushev said.
Chechen gang leader grabs limelight
Later Friday, Aslambek Aslakhanov, a lawmaker from Chechnya in the federal parliament, journalist Anna Politkovskaya and two Red Cross representatives entered the building for a new round of negotiations with the rebels, according to Alexander Machevsky, a Kremlin official.
“Now the task ahead is not only to safely free the hostages but to ease the terms of their captivity to the best extent,” Machevsky said.
In his statement late Friday, Saddam said in a statement read over Iraqi state television that if the siege ends in more bloodshed, “the Chechen people will lose the sympathy of Russia and the Russian people.”

‘OFFENSIVE’ STRATEGY
Deputy Interior Minister Vladimir Vasiliyev charged that Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov was behind the attack, and Russian networks broadcast a videotape of Maskhadov, apparently made sometime since June, in an effort to prove the link.



The tape shows Maskhadov saying rebels have shifted from guerrilla warfare to an “offensive” strategy and adding, “I am certain that in the final stage there will be a still more unique action, similar to the jihad, that will liberate our land from the Russian aggressors.”
There had been hope earlier Friday for a peaceful end to the standoff, when the rebels freed the eight children and reportedly promised to free 75 foreign captives, including three Americans. But negotiations on releasing the foreigners broke down.
Russian security officials told reporters they had met the conditions specified for the hostages’ release but that the captors had apparently changed their mind, MSNBC.com’s Preston Mendenhall reported from Moscow.
“We’re very concerned that no other hostages have been freed and that the terrorists are not prepared to discuss the release of other hostages,” U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow said minutes after the children were freed.
An Oklahoma City woman, Jean Booker, said the State Department reported her son, Sandy Alan Booker, 49, who was vacationing in Russia, was among the captives. He lives in the Oklahoma capital as well.
The rebels, including women who claim to be widows of ethnic insurgents, have demanded that Russia withdraw its troops from the Caucasus province of Chechnya. Earlier, a Web site linked to the rebels said they would blow up the theater if the Russians did not withdraw in seven days.
The freed children, dressed in winter coats and one of them clutching a stuffed bear toy with aviator goggles, appeared to be in good health as they were accompanied by Red Cross representatives. A Swiss citizen was among the group of children, ages 6-12.
NTV television quoted one girl as saying she was fine but she was very worried about her mother still inside the theater.
So far 54 hostages have been released, and about 100 people were believed to have escaped during the confusing first minutes of the hostage-taking. On Thursday, two women raced to freedom under fire from a grenade launcher. Their escape came after medics dragged the body of a young woman from the theater. She was shot in the chest and was the only known fatality of the siege. She reportedly was killed as she tried to move around inside the theater after the attack began.

TEARFULLY SINGING SONGS
Several dozen cast members of the show that was in progress when the rebels stormed the facility Wednesday night gathered near the theater Friday afternoon. With tears running down their faces, they sang songs from the show and read an appeal to Putin to end the crisis peacefully.
The reason for the breakdown in negotiations Friday was not specified. Alexander Zharkov, head of the Russian Red Cross, said earlier that copies of the passports of some hostages were given to the gunmen.
The hostages include Americans, Britons, Dutch, Australians, Austrians and Germans, and embassies were requested to send representatives to the scene to meet their freed citizens, Federal Security Service spokesman Sergei Ignatchenko said.
Negotiations between foreign diplomats and the gunmen were on-again, off-again, but the details of the state of the talks remained confusing, MSNBC.com’s Mendenhall reported.
“The situation is very, very unclear,” German Ambassador Ernst-Jorg von Studnitz stressed during an interview with Mendenhall at the scene.

Seven Russian men and women released earlier Friday were receiving medical care, but Ignatchenko declined to say why they were chosen. Officials expressed hopes that the approximately 30 children among the captives would be freed Friday as well.
Russian NTV crews were allowed inside with a doctor Friday and videotape was broadcast showing three male captors — in camouflage and carrying Kalashnikov-style rifles — were seen sitting in what appeared to be a kitchen.
Two wore black masks. The television identified a third man, who wore no mask, as group leader Movsar Barayev, a nephew of rebel warlord Arbi Barayev, who reportedly died last year.
Two women in the group of rebels wore robes with Arabic script on the head coverings. Only their eyes were exposed, and they cradled pistols against their chests.
The women had what looked to be explosives wrapped in tape around their waists. The packages were wired to a small button the women carried in their hands.
The captors made no comments in the broadcast footage, which also later included a brief clip of six women hostages guarded by a female attacker.

Relatives of hostages seized by armed Chechens in a theater in downtown Moscow hold posters and shout anti-war slogans during a rally on Friday.



MIXED REPORTS ON CONDITIONS
Hostages gave varying reports on conditions inside the theater.
“We are safe and sound, it’s warm and we have water and there’s nothing else we need in a situation like this,” hostage Anna Adrianova told a radio station early Friday.
She said the hostages were pleading with Russian leaders to end the crisis without force.
Another hostage said the situation inside the theater was tense and conditions were worsening. The captives had not received food or water and were using the theater’s orchestra pit as a toilet.
Yelena Malyonkina, also a spokeswoman for the “Nord-Ost” musical being staged in the theater, said captive production official Anatoly Glazychev told her a bomb was placed in the center of the theater and the stage and aisles were mined.
“Both the terrorists and hostages are nervous,” Malyonkina said.
Ignatchenko said some hostages were sympathizing with their captors’ and calling relatives by cell phones to ask them to stage anti-war demonstrations in Moscow.
About 100 protesters arrived as dawn broke Friday, carrying banners and chanting anti-war slogans, pushing against metal police barriers. Several said they were responding to requests to protest in calls from relatives.
Putin said the audacious raid was planned by terrorists based outside Russia, and the Qatar-based satellite television channel Al-Jazeera broadcast statements allegedly made by some hostage-takers.
“I swear by God we are more keen on dying than you are keen on living,” a black-clad male said in remarks believed to have been recorded Wednesday. “Each one of us is willing to sacrifice himself for the sake of God and the independence of Chechnya.”
The hostage-taking occurred less than three miles from the Kremlin and further undermined claims by Putin and other Russian officials that the situation is under control in Chechnya, where Russian soldiers suffer casualties daily in skirmishes or mine explosions.
Over the past decade, Chechens or their sympathizers have been involved in a number of bold, often bloody hostage-taking situations in southern Russian provinces, especially in Dagestan. Nearly 200 hundred hostages and rescuers died in two of operations.



Russia’s Caucasus and surrounding regions have historically been a hotbed of wars and ethnic discontent. Here’s a look at troubles in Russia’s rumbling underbelly and the conflicts that could set the region alight:

 

Right. I think the motive is obvious, but it's just so ludicrous and blatantly transparent.