Journalists question official version of terror act in Kaspiysk in 1996

The terror act committed in 1996 in Kaspiysk was an extraordinary event, but later terror acts in Russia forced residents to become accustomed to such news, Dagestani journalists suggest. They doubt the official version that the terror act committed in a house where families of border guards lived was connected with the blocking of smuggling channels.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on November 16, 1996, the first major terror act in Dagestan took place in Kaspiysk, in a house where mainly families of border guards lived. As a result of the terror act, 68 people, including 21 children, were killed.

According to Milrad Fatullaev, the editor-in-chief of the agency "Derbent", natives of Chechnya might be involved in the terror act committed in Dagestan in 1996. "Perhaps, they tried to divert the authorities' attention from the situation in Chechnya and the emerging 'Wahhabi enclaves' in Dagestan," Milrad Fatullaev said.

Gadjimurad Sagitov, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper "Novoye Delo", believes that the terror act was carried out with the support of international terrorist organizations, with some political motives.

As for the people's memory about the terror act, the experts have almost unanimously claimed that it is forgotten. Milrad Fatullaev has emphasized that at present, out of the events of the past years, people first of all remember the year of 1999 with the militant invasion from Chechnya and the terror act in Buynaksk, then the terror act committed at a parade in Kaspiysk in 2002, and only then – the terror act which took place in 1996.