The only survivor of a May 30 border post massacre in southwestern Kazakhstan has confessed to killing all 15 victims - 14 border guards and one civilian, newsru.com said.
However, locals suspect the 19-year-old draftee, Private Vladislav Chelakh, was forced to take the blame by special services to cover up the real culprits. A news presenter at a local channel has quit, saying he refused to read “false” news about the confessions.
Chelakh was arrested in possession of his commander's weapon on June 5, several days after the bodies of fourteen border guards and a local huntsman were found in burnt-out border post barracks, which was initially thought to have been destroyed by an armed attack or an argument between the soldiers.
Chelakh said he had shot all the soldiers and the local hunter, put their bodies into beds and then set fire to the barracks. Then he said he went up into the mountains, taking civilian clothes and a small sum of money with him.
On June 4, Chelakh returned to the burned out border post where he saw investigators. He was reportedly in a deep stupor and could not say a word.
Investigators are considering several versions, including a fight between the soldiers (although none of them had a trace of alcohol in their blood), an attack by religious extremists, an assault by smugglers, and even extraterrestial forces. The main version, however, is bullying.
Chelakh was the only ethnic Russian on the border post. So investigators said he could have been subjected to hazing.
The young man’s family said he had been looking forward to service as a border guard. But the local Vremya newspaper said something had happened to Chelakh on the second day of his service at the border post in question. The soldier has refused to comment, even though he might be facing a life term if found guilty.
The soldier’s mother, Svetlana Vashchenko, said she would go to the International Criminal Court to probe the massacre since she believed her son was not guilty.
“The lawyers refuse to defend my son and those who agree charge $2,000 a month, I’ve got relatives in Belgium…they will help to collect documents to appeal to the International Court,” Vashchenko said.
The mother strongly denies that her son could be capable of killing people.
Meanwhile, the head of the notorious border post, Alexey Fomin, was arrested on Thursday for having failed to report on the suspicious silence at the post from May 28-30, a spokesman for the Kazakh Prosecutor General’s office, Nurdaulet Suindikov, said.
Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev described the incident as a terrorist attack, and said he had set up a special commission to investigate it.
