'Black Widows' suspected in Russian plane disasters

MOSCOW - One of the prime suspects in the probable suicide bombing of two Russian airliners, a 27-year-old Chechen woman, had a compelling motive for her alleged actions: revenge.

Amanta (also known as Aminat) Nagaeva experienced the sharp end of the brutal decade-long conflict between Russia and the separatist region first-hand, say her neighbours in Chechnya.

Three or four years ago, one of her three brothers was suspected of terrorism and was abducted, apparently by Russian forces. Like many others who have suffered the same fate he has never been seen again and is presumed dead.

The Russian daily Izvestia said her profile fitted that of the archetypal Chechen female suicide bomber - Black Widows, as they are often known.

"As experience shows, practically all the female suicide bombers who have blown themselves up in Moscow or the Caucasus were the wives of [rebel] fighters killed in battles with federal forces or had lost close relatives involved in the hostilities," the paper wrote.

"Nagaeva had an obvious motive to become a suicide bomber; by blowing herself and the plane up she was avenging her brother."

Nagaeva was on a TU-134 bound for Volgograd which broke up in mid-air south of Moscow, while the other prime suspect, a Chechen woman known only as S. Dzhebirkhanova, was on a TU-154 heading for the Black Sea resort of Sochi which dropped out of the air within minutes of the other plane. Eighty-nine people died in the two explosions.

Investigators' suspicions were aroused when nobody came to identify the two women's bodies, and their fears that the catastrophe was man-made were confirmed when the FSB security service uncovered traces of a high explosive, hexogen, traditionally favoured by Chechen rebels in the wreckage of both planes.

The two women's behaviour was also suspiciously similar. Both checked in at the very last minute, provided minimal passport data to check-in and security staff and sat towards the rear of the planes near the toilets and the engines. Both also appear to have been at the very epicentre of the explosions.

In the case of Nagaeva, what remained of her body was spread over a wide area. Such a gruesome and wide distribution of body parts is familiar to Russian investigators. The body of the Chechen suicide bomber who blew herself up last December near the Kremlin was similarly dismembered.

Investigators believe the bombs were detonated in the toilets so as to immediately pulverise the planes' twin engines.

- INDEPENDENT