Russian major claims special forces killed NZ nurse
NZPANovember 26, 2010, 7:05 am
A Russian special forces officer, Major Aleksi Potyomkin, has claimed that New Zealand nurse Sheryl Thayer, three other Red Cross nurses and two other workers killed in Chechnya in December 1996 were murdered by his unit and not by Chechen insurgents.
The nurses ran a medical centre in a hospital compound at Noviye Atagi, 17km southwest of Grozny, the Chechen capital. Shortly after a truce had been declared, the nurses were murdered in their beds. The hospital guards, in line with International Red Cross policy, were not armed.
The Telegraph newspaper in London reported Potyomkin said the special forces unit had seen Chechen insurgents enter the compound and went in after them.
He said the killing of the nurses was a mistake and recalled the leader of the unit radioing back to say there had been a mistake: "No beardies -- only foreigners."
But, he admitted, this might have been a ploy -- the FSB security service had a policy to leave no witnesses.
Wellington nurse Louise Akavi survived the bloody attack.
The room where she was sleeping escaped the attention of the killers who, wearing masks, forced their way into the hospital before dawn and went room to room, using guns with silencers to slaughter the six.
Ms Thayer, of Southland, along with the other workers from Canada, Spain and Norway, and a Dutch architect, were caring for victims of the first Chechen war.
Potyomkin, who is on the run in Germany with his family, has claimed he was there at the time and that members of his unit murdered the aid workers in error, mistaking them for Chechen rebels. They then did their best to cover up the crime and pin it on the Chechens, he alleged.
But the Telegraph reported Alexander Cherkasov of human rights group Memorial, an expert in Chechnya who has often clashed with the Kremlin, said he doubted the new claims. A key detail in the former agent's account was wrong, he said, and Russian troops were not active in the vicinity at that time whereas Chechen rebels were stationed there in large numbers.
In an interview in 1990, Ms Thayer said the work she did for the Red Cross was rewarding.
"It's more difficult work than in New Zealand but I don't get stressed out by it. It's rewarding to see people recover, and the patients you look after are extremely grateful for what you do for them," she said.
