Russian Commandos End Bus Hijacking

Terrorism: Elite forces shoot and kill gunman who seized the vehicle 13 hours earlier. The man had sought the release of jailed comrades.

By MAURA REYNOLDS -- LA TIMES -- August 1 2001

Russian law enforcement officials identified the suspect as Sultan-Said Idiyev, a 34-year-old ethnic Chechen and former convict who was reportedly connected to a similar 1994 hijacking.

"The security services had a brilliant performance," said Viktor Kazantsev, President Vladimir V. Putin's representative in southern Russia. "I would advise all terrorists to remember this outcome and stop short of similar actions in future." The bus was seized about 6:45 a.m. as it left the southern town of Nevinnomyssk  [Location of a Molokan church. Also, 4 miles from the Russian Molokan Center, and where an earlier bomb exploded.] on a scheduled run to Stavropol' [near 3 Molokan churches], about 30 miles to the north. Stavropol', the regional capital, is about 750 miles south of Moscow. The gunman, who was armed with grenades and a semiautomatic rifle and had rigged his body with TNT, ordered the driver to head in the opposite direction, to the airport in the town of Mineralniye Vody, about 60 miles to the southeast. [There are about 50 Russian Molokan churches in the Stavropol' region, and 12 south of Mineralniye Vody, also a location of a previous bomb blast.]

There were about 40 passengers on the bus. During the day, Idiyev released about 10 of them, including all of the children.

Two men were injured as the bus traveled to Mineralniye Vody--a passenger, who was shot under unclear circumstances and then released, and a police captain who tried to negotiate with Idiyev as the red and white Hungarian-made bus passed through his town.

In Mineralniye Vody, the bus came to a stop on an elevated section of roadway at the airport. In the course of the day, as the sun heated the bus, hostages broke windows to get relief from the soaring temperatures. Curtains drawn over the windows billowed in the breeze, giving occasional glimpses of the people inside.

Several times, Idiyev fired a weapon into the air to underscore his demands. Negotiations with the gunman were conducted by radio. As evening approached, Idiyev began making new demands and appeared to be growing more unpredictable, officials said. That was when elite anti-terrorist Alpha commandos were given the order to end the hijacking.

Idiyev managed to fire his weapon several times as he fell, the report said, and landed on the grenade, which blew off his foot. Still, Alpha commandos set off several concussion grenades as a safety measure before pronouncing Idiyev dead.

After commandos entered the bus, law enforcement officials kept the former hostages in seclusion, interviewing them to determine if there were hidden accomplices. Some news reports earlier in the day cited freed passengers as saying Idiyev appeared to exchange signals with another man who was among the passengers. Several Russian news reports also suggested that there might be a second hijacker.

Chechnya's representative in the Russian parliament, Aslambek Aslakhanov, said the gunman appeared to be acting on his own and not on the orders of Chechen commanders.

"If that were the case, there would have been political demands," Aslakhanov said on Echo of Moscow radio.

Russia suffered a rash of similar hijackings in the early 1990s, many of them in the same southern Stavropol region, which borders Chechnya. However, the number of such incidents fell off after hostilities with Chechnya resumed in 1999.

Russian officials said Idiyev had demanded the release of comrades serving prison terms for a bus hijacking in 1994. In that incident, gunmen seized 30 schoolchildren and teachers near Stavropol before releasing all but four of them in return for a helicopter.

The hijackers then flew to Chechnya, where they were apprehended by commandos, who followed them in their own helicopters. No hostages were injured. One of the hijackers was killed in the attack; the others were jailed in different parts of Russia, and one later died of tuberculosis.