COPENHAGEN, 31 October — Denmark arrested a senior Chechen activist yesterday at the behest of Russia, which said it suspected him of helping plot last week’s Moscow theater siege in which at least 119 hostages died.
A Danish judge ordered Akhmed Zakayev detained for 13 days, to make sure he did not flee. The justice minister said he might be extradited if Russia promised not to use the death penalty.
Zakayev, a top aide to the region’s fugitive separatist president, Aslan Maskhadov, had attended a long-planned Chechen exiles’ gathering this week in Copenhagen. Denmark’s agreement to allow the meeting enraged Russian President Vladimir Putin, who canceled a state visit next month in protest.
Police said they received information from Russia on Tuesday that Zakayev was suspected of helping prepare the theater siege and of taking part in other "terrorist" acts from 1996-99. "The Copenhagen police found this was sufficient foundation for the arrest," they said in a statement.
Maskhadov and Zakayev have both condemned the raid in Moscow as the work of an extremist rebel faction outside their control.
Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen denied Denmark had given in to political pressure from Moscow: "This case has been treated according to normal police procedures," he told a news conference. "I would find it very alarming if a government or an opposition interfered in the work of the police."
Interfax news agency quoted Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Valery Loshchinin as telling the upper house of the Russian Parliament that an extradition request was being drafted.
Zakayev told Reuters in an interview on Sunday he had no link to the three-day siege that began when some 50 Chechen activists seized a theater and threatened to kill their more than 750 hostages unless the Russian forces quit their homeland.
Meanwhile, two more captives died overnight, taking the toll to 119, Moscow health officials said. A mystery gas used to knock the rebels out when troops stormed in on Saturday led to all but two of the hostage deaths.
Russia refused for four days to name the gas, saying this would aid rebels, but Health Minister Yuri Shevchenko did so yesterday, insisting it was not a banned substance. "To neutralize the terrorists a substance based on Fentanyl derivatives was used," Interfax quoted him as telling a news briefing.
Fentanyl is a potent opium-based narcotic used as an anaesthetic. .
Many of the hundreds of people who were released from hospital following treatment for the effects of the gas have been readmitted, Interfax reported yesterday. A total of 434 people have been released but 230 others, including six children, remained in hospital with 15 former hostages still in critical condition, Interfax said.
