From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng (Original Message) Sent: 11/22/2007 8:37 PM
November 23, 2007
Akhmed Zakaev's speech on the eve of the first anniversary of Alexander Litvinenko’s death hosted by Lord Pearson of Rannoch
SIA CHECHENPRESS November 22, 2007
It was a special feature of Sasha that he never kept his friends waiting. He came to visit you more often, he telephoned you more often, and in every other respect too gave much more than he could ever be given in return. Sasha was one of that rare breed of unselfish people who, when they perform a valuable service, manage to leave you feeling that you are in no way indebted to them.
One year on, I still have not plucked up the courage to tell my grandchildren that Sasha will never be coming to play with them again, or to take them out on a trip. Even at their age, one year is too short a time for them to have forgotten such a person.
Alexander was a free man. He was born and grew up under the totalitarian Soviet regime and, moreover, served in one of the most loathesome institutions of the Soviet system, the KGB/FSB. Amazingly, he had the inner strength not to lose his common humanity, and not to flinch when faced with the choice between truth and falsehood, good and evil. He was one of very few who did not succumb to a servile ideology, who did not become a blind tool in the hands of that criminal regime.
Even if I had not had the honour of knowing Alexander personally, I would, as an ordinary Chechen, still remember him with gratitude. At a time when the majority half genuinely believed, half slavishly pretended to believe the account concocted by the Kremlin of the events leading to the start of the second anti-Chechen war, Alexander Litvinenko stood up and told the truth. He told the truth about who was really behind the bombing of Russian citizens, who had blown up of apartment blocks in Moscow, Buinaksk, and Volgodonsk and why. He revealed the truth about who those highly trained, professional terrorists were. The great strength of what Alexander had to say was its sheer technical competence, his voice that of a man who by chance had found himself in the central administrative apparatus of the world’s most systematic organised crime syndicate. The information which Sasha made public bore the hallmark of insider knowledge and was full of factual detail, including names, addresses, and telephone numbers.
As a man of strong moral principle, Sasha embarked on an irreconcilable struggle against that criminal regime, and found natural allies in the Chechens, who for many years had been confronting the Kremlin terrorists in almost total isolation. Alexander did not opt for the hypocritical but far more comfortable stance of a Russian patriot, instead openly declaring his support for the Chechen people, whose resistance he saw as a beacon of freedom for everyone.
His enemies were scared of Sasha and mobilised all their resources, even nuclear resources, in order to physically take revenge on this hero. A year later we see those directly involved in his murder being celebrated throughout Russia in much the same way that, in Soviet times, the first cosmonauts were feted for having carried out what was described as an important state mission.
Despite all this, Sasha managed to make an incalculable contribution to the inevitable downfall of these terrorists, which will surely come, no matter how sure of themselves they may feel today.
The noble memory of Alexander Litvinenko will live on not only in the hearts of his friends. It is no exaggeration to say that he has already gone down in history as an ideal of human courage and nobility, a man who dared to challenge one of the most inhuman regimes the world has ever known.
Akhmed Zakaev
http://www.chechenpress.co.uk/english/news/2007/11/23/01.shtml
