MOSCOW. Sept 7 (Interfax-AVN) - A detained participant in the hostage taking in the North Ossetian town of Beslan said that the task to seize a school had been set by separatist leaders Aslan Maskhadov and Shamil Basayev.
"A man nicknamed Colonel gathered us in the forest, and they said: you must seize a school in Beslan. They said that this task had been set by Maskhadov and Basayev," the detained man said in his testimony broadcast by the Rossiya television station's Vesti news program on Monday evening.
"When we asked Colonel why we had to do this and what the objective was, he, Colonel, said: 'because is it necessary to unleash a war across the entire Caucasus," he said.