Russian Diplomats Confirmed Dead
// Interethnic execution
Terrorism
The Russian Foreign Ministry has confirmed the deaths of the employees of the Russian embassy in Baghdad who were kidnapped by the Mujahedeen Shura Council terrorist group. Moscow has demanded that Iraqi authorities and the coalition forces command “make every effort so that not one of the participants in the crime against our citizens escape justice.” The Foreign Ministry further stated that “It is the coalition forces that bear responsibility for guaranteeing safety in Iraq, including the protection of foreign diplomatic missions and their personnel. We have repeatedly appealed to the command of the foreign military contingent to insist that appropriate measures be taken.”
Moscow waited almost a day to confirm the obvious. Stills from a video of the execution of the Russians appeared on an Islamist website a day earlier. The hostages were shown individually. One of the hostages stated, “I, Zaitsev Fedor Pavlovich, work as third secretary of the embassy of the Russian Federation in the Republic of Iraq. I am also assistant to Russian Ambassador in Baghdad Vladimir Vasilyevich Chamov. Date of birth” October 27, 1978. Single.” Zaitsev was a graduate of the Moscow Suvorov Academy and attended Moscow State Institute of International relations in the international relations department, where he studied Arabic. He worked for the Foreign Ministry since 2001. Iraq was his first foreign posting.
In addition to Zaitsev, embassy cook Rinat Agliullin, also born in 1978 and worked in the President Hotel before serving in the embassy, also lost his life, as did driver Anatoly Smirnov and member of the security service Oleg Fedoseev, born in 1964.
The men's executions were also filmed. Two of the hostages were beheaded and one was shot in the head with a pistol. The fourth execution was reported but not depicted. Yesterday morning, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated that the Russian hostages had been certainly identified in the executions shown. Those doubts were dispelled in the course of the day, apparently.
The embassy workers were kidnapped on June 3. Guard Vitaly Titov was killed at that time. It is commonly acknowledged that neither the Iraqi government not the occupational forces are in control in Iraq today. Foreign embassy personnel live under siege conditions and are allowed to leave embassy compounds only under military escort and only in case of extreme need. A Russian diplomat with long experience in Iraq speculated that the men had violated security instructions to go to a store where cheap arak, the local hard liquor, was sold and were followed by the militants who kidnapped them. The diplomat added that the men's tragic decision may have unpleasant consequences for the leadership of the diplomatic mission.
Olga Berezintseva, Andrey Ivanov
All the Article in Russian as of June 27, 2006
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