Rebel leader accuses Russian army

Raduyev: Accused of using hostages as human shields

MAKHACHKALA, Russia -- A Chechen separatist leader accused of leading a hostage-taking raid that led to 78 deaths has told a court that the Russian military was partly to blame.

Salman Raduyev, the most prominent Chechen rebel to be arrested and put on trial to date, told the court in the southern Russian republic of Dagestan on Monday that the Russian military left behind scores of weapons and artillery in Chechnya in the early 1990s after the small republic first declared its sovereignty.

"Nothing would have happened had the military taken all the weapons from Chechnya in 1992," said Raduyev, referring to the year that the late Chechen separatist leader Dzhokhar Dudayev dissolved Chechnya's parliament and declared one-man rule.

"We would not have had the armed forces if they had not given us weapons," Raduyev said, according to the Interfax news agency.

Raduyev and three other defendants face charges of terrorism, banditry, hostage-taking, organisation of murders and illegal armed formations.

The trial, in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, opened last Thursday and is expected to last at least two months.

Security is tight, with snipers guarding rooftops and sniffer dogs patrolling the grounds for explosives.

Human shields

On Monday, officials decided to move the proceedings to the capital's oldest prison -- a more secure location than the courthouse.

Raduyev has testified that he was only following orders from Dudayev when he led a raid on the southern town of Kizlyar in 1996.

He and his comrades took hundreds of hostages at a local hospital and used some of them as human shields.

The militants were blocked by Russian troops near the Chechen border, where an eight-day gun battle raged before Raduyev successfully slipped back into Chechnya.

The indictment said 78 Russian soldiers, police officers and civilians were killed during the raid.

"I can't bear responsibility for what happened in Kizlyar," Raduyev told the court, denying that when he planned the raid, he expected there would be civilian and military casualties.

Raduyev also faces charges in connection with an explosion in southern Russia in 1997 and taking policemen hostage the year before.

He was arrested during a military operation in Novogroznensky, a city about 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the Chechen capital Grozny, in March 2000.