On a drizzly Wednesday night in October several hundred people were watching a musical at the Ball-Bearing Factory Theater in Moscow. The show was a romantic love story set in Stalin’s Russia. As the audience settled down to the second half of the show, dozens of heavily-armed men and women laden with explosives arrived at the theater in three vans. The attackers raked the foyer with gunfire and swarmed into the building. Inside the auditorium, the theatergoers were watching the show, and heard nothing.

1. Terror in Moscow
On a drizzly Wednesday night in October several hundred people were watching a musical at
the Ball-Bearing Factory Theater in Moscow. The show was a romantic love story set in Stalin’s
Russia. As the audience settled down to the second half of the show, dozens of heavily-armed
men and women laden with explosives arrived at the theater in three vans. The attackers raked
the foyer with gunfire and swarmed into the building. Inside the auditorium, the theatergoers
were watching the show, and heard nothing.
That night’s performance was recorded, as was usual, by the theater’s video camera. As
gunmen sealed off the auditorium, the sound and the video were cut. The audience heard the
terrorist leader Movsar Barayev announce that if the Russian army did not get out of Chechnya,
he would command his followers to blow up the theater and everyone inside it. By now the
police had sealed off the surrounding streets. From inside the theater, a hostage used her
mobile phone to call a local radio station.
The suicide squad numbered 22 men and 19 women. The woman’s job was to guard the
hostages and on command to detonate the explosives strapped to their bodies. It was clear
from the start that the Kremlin, humiliated by such a bold attack, would never give in to the
Chechen demands. Relatives and friends prayed for the hostages to be saved, but everyone
expected a bloodbath.
The Russians could not use their troops until they knew more about what awaited them inside
the theater. A few children, some Muslims, and two pregnant women were released, but no

2. one dared to go in. Then, 6 hours into the siege, a young woman was seen making a way across
the theater car park. No one knew who she was or how she got through the police cordon.
Thursday morning dawned and still no sign of a Russian counterattack. Inside the theater the
minutes ticked by. In a quiet moment, the gunman with the video camera focused on his
leader. 25 year old Movsar Barayev was the nephew of the notorious Chechen rebel.
Embarrassingly for the Russians they claimed to have killed him ten days earlier in Chechnya.
Despite the slogans in Arabic and the women Saudi style costumes, the terrorists were native
Chechens, with one exception – a Gulf Arab volunteer who would shave his bushy beard in
order not to stand out on the streets of Moscow.
As the Chechens grew more confident they allowed some Russian MPs to enter the theater.
Latter in the day two doctors volunteered to go in. Before they could treat any hostages they
were made to carry out the body of the terrorists’ first victim. She was 26 year old shop
assistant who lived nearby.