Beslan

Once again a hostage crisis involving Islamic extremists has been ended by Russian security forces with large civilian casualties. There can be no possible justification for the actions of the terrorists. But there are major questions hanging over the nature of the resolution of the siege. As at Dubrovka, questions include: how was the hostage crisis allowed to happen? Are Russia's security forces so corrupt that they can be bribed into letting such situations develop? Who are the terrorists who managed to escape before the main assault on the school building? Are they, as at Dubrovka, agents of the security police, the FSB?

This tragedy, and the evil it exposes to view, cannot even be compared to the horror of 9/11, for there are widespread suspicions - both among Russia's population, and abroad - that the work of the Islamofascists was enabled and connived at by the very forces who are supposed to provide security for Russia's citizens.

President Putin is no friend of democracy or liberty. His government's support for terrorist states such as Iran and Syria speaks for itself. Prominent dissident figures such as Andrei Babitsky, Vladimir Bukovsky, Elena Bonner and others have pointed to the history of Putin's involvement with the KGB - the organization that was responsible for creating the PLO, and which encouraged and orchestrated the spread of international extreme left and Islamic terrorism during the 1970s and 80s.

The recent arrest of Andrei Babitsky, and the poisoning of Anna Politkovkskaya, point to continued KGB activity in the suppression of free speech and democratic debate in Russia.

Western leaders and their governments should keep their distance from Putin - he is no friend of the West, and his loss of control over his own country, practically delivering it into the hands of the Islamofascists, is a mortal danger not only to Russia, but to the whole world.