Rhea's Confession

Download the original untranslated file here: АРХИВ-020171001_16.09.2009.pdf
Discussion thread: http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=38397

Translation

Note: The source of this translation is unknown. Initially posted to uF forums by user gnosis in this thread.

- - - - - - - - - - -

I, Rhea Aliyeva, hereby confess my guilt in cases P-78-23/05, and P-78-41/02.

I cannot justify my crimes. I only wish to tell the truth. On 6 August, 2009, Vera Gamidova detonated explosives at the checkpoint in Derbent, killing herself and two soldiers of the Russian Federation, Marat Stepanov and Oleg Kamenev. Her target was the barracks. If she had succeeded, more than 200 would have perished.

I was the matchstick.

From the beginning, we were sisters, and we swore we would always be sisters. We slept always side by side. The oldest was Vera, then

- - - - - - - - - - -

Oksana, then me. We swore we would live together always. Then we swore we would die together.

We did this because of our fathers and brothers who had been killed and left to rot in the fields.

We would join the noble resistance to strike the occupiers while they slept.

Now I see how we were used by them.

In the beginning, we were innocent. We had heard about the Emir, and we went to Vedeno to find him. We were afraid. We were three girls. We were pure, but we knew nothing. We asked everyone we met if they could help us find the Emir. No one would speak to us.

A man in the back of a teahouse pointed to the door.

- - - - - - - - - - -

“Go home,” he said. “Go back to your parents. Go back to your husbands.”

We told him our parents were gone, and we had no husbands. We said we wanted to meet the Emir. We knew how to help him.

He looked at us and asked us how we could help the Emir. Vera said we were ready to sacrifice.

He told us to go home.

That night as we walked back to our room, the trucks came for us. The men wore masks. They took us at gunpoint and bound our hands. They put hoods over our heads. They tried to touch us as little as possible as if our bodies were poison.

- - - - - - - - - - -

I heard a man’s voice say, “You are now the property of the Liberation Army of Dagestan.”

I could hear Oksana crying beside me. Vera told us to be calm. She said it was natural for them to fear us.

We drove all night until we came to a building in the woods. I felt acorns crunch under our feet. When they took off our hoods, I saw that we were in a gymnasium. There was an empty concrete pool in the center of the room and broken benches for weights. They forced us down the ladders into the pool. There were bloodstains on the ground.

They told us we were Russian spies. They said the army was so weak they were sending their whores.

Vera said we wanted to talk to the Emir.

- - - - - - - - - - -

The Emir is dead, they said. Everyone knows.

Vera said they were lying. We would only speak to the Emir. They took her away from us then and led her up the stairs. Oksana tried to hold her back, but Vera told her not to worry. “Our brothers will know that we are pure.”

We waited for hours. Oksana told me that we would die without Vera. She said they were going to rape us and then leave us for the dogs. I said, “We should trust in Vera.”

When they brought Vera back her face was swollen and her shirt was torn. She started to climb down the ladder, but they wouldn’t let her. They sat her down on the ground.

- - - - - - - - - - -

The leader was a man with a shaved head, a wide face, and a thick black beard. He said everyone must be tested before God. Then he called for another prisoner to be brought in. The other prisoner was barely a man. He was a Russian soldier who they told us had been captured two weeks earlier. He walked as if he were drunk. He was missing a finger on his right hand.

They pushed him into the pool with us. The leader took a dirty knife from his belt and threw it on the rubble in front of us.

He said, we will see how strong you are.

Oksana picked it up.

The soldier got to his feet. I could see one of his eyes was infected.

- - - - - - - - - - -

“If you can kill them both,” the leader said to him, “I will let you live longer.”

The leader turned to us and said, “Let’s see if you can slaughter a beast. Show us what they teach the girls in Cherkessia.”

They stood around us holding their rifles and laughing. We knew that they could shoot him whenever they wanted.

Oksana said they were testing us. If we failed, they would kill us too.

She walked up to the soldier slowly, holding the knife in front of her. She swung it in the air in front of her, too far away from him to do anything.

The soldier picked up a broken chunk of cement and threw it at her. It hit her in the chest and she fell to the ground wheezing.

- - - - - - - - - - -

He put his knee on my back and pushed my face into the ground. I knew I was going to die.

Then Oksana cut his throat.

I see now that the soldier had no other choice. He was an innocent man, another victim of the terrorist’s brutality. His blood sprayed over me. He was dying on top of me, but I could not get up. I was trapped under his weight. My body was covered in blood so hot I thought it would burn my skin.

- - - - - - - - - - -

That’s how it was decided that she would carry out the attack, and I would be the one to coordinate it.

The attack was not our idea, but we were proud to be called upon to sacrifice.

I was the matchstick. She was the flame.

The day after we killed the soldier, I saw the four blue marks on my arm where the soldier’s hand had grabbed me. I had been held by death. And now I could not escape it.

After this, the Liberation Army allowed us to train with them. We lived among them moving from camp to camp in the mountains, sometimes staying in an abandoned apartment block from the Soviet days,

- - - - - - - - - - - -

hidden in the forest. Trees were growing out of the windows. They made us study the Koran. They said they would teach us to become mujahideen, to purify ourselves. They said that Allah had willed us to come to them and join the jihad. Our cause was their cause. We learned to shoot with their rifles. We ate their food and prayed their prayers. Our every prayer was a prayer for death to the occupiers, death to the Cossacks, death to the killers of innocence.

We believed we would purify ourselves in their blood.

The leader chose which men Oksana and I would marry. We were frightened, but then we learned that the men we would marry were already dead. They were foreign jihadis who had been killed by the Russians in an ambush. They were too young to marry when they died, so now we would be their brides. We would be dead soon too because

- - - - - - - - - -

we had pledged our lives to the cause. We would meet our husbands in paradise.

Vera was not getting married. Vera was not going to die. She was going to live forever.

My wedding was held at midnight in the gymnasium. There were candles and a wreath. They put me in a dress and a black veil. They stood me next to the casket and a picture of a boy with a thin beard. I was too numb to move. You look beautiful, they said. Vera rubbed rouge on my cheeks to make me look less pale. I felt like I was already dead.

It was not long until they told us our mission.

- - - - - - - - - - -

Oksana would carry the explosives in a baby carriage.

I would hold the mobile phone. When it was time, I would call a number and detonate the bomb.

There were other bombs prepared to disable the doors of the barracks. The plan was for the soldiers to burn alive. I was the matchstick.

They used me.

On the day of the attack, a fog drifted in from the Caspian. Oksana pushed the baby carriage up the steep road to the base.

- - - - - - - - - - - They had told us to dress like whores because then the soldiers would not shoot us. They had said Allah could see through our make-up and clothes to our pure hearts.

In her high heels, she slipped and fell in the mud many times.

On the phone, she said she couldn’t stop shaking. Her feet were numb.

One of the wheels of the carriage was broken, and it was difficult to steer. As she pushed the carriage up the hill, it kept sliding backwards.

A troop transport truck sped past her. The men called out to her and laughed.

- - - - - - - - - - - I watched her but I could not help her.

I had the other cell phone in my pocket, the one that would trigger the explosives.

Her job was to bring the carriage through the checkpoint. She was to tell the guards that she was going to visit her boyfriend to show him his son.

Tell them it’s a boy, the leader had said. No one cares as much about a girl.

An enormous truck drove by carrying armored cars. Oksana slipped again and the carriage fell over her, rolling off the road and into the ditch. She was only 25 meters from the checkpoint.

- - - - - - - - - - -

Oksana climbed down into the ditch, but she couldn’t lift the carriage back up. As strong as she was, the explosives were too heavy.

Two soldiers walked down from the guard post to investigate. Their guns were aimed at her.

There was nothing I could do.

When she saw them coming, she started to run.

Oksana was a coward.

She would have died, if not for Vera. The soldiers fired a warning shot and then another. She fell, cowering at the base of a tree. They could have killed her if they chose. They showed her more mercy than she would have shown them.

Then an old car came driving down the road speeding towards

- - - - - - - - - - -

the soldiers. I saw Vera in the driver’s seat. The soldiers turned and fired, shattering the windshield. As the car came closer, there was an explosion, and then everything was burning. The soldiers disappeared in the flames.

When I looked again for Oksana, I saw her running away.

As the soldiers came pouring out of the base, I triggered the other explosion, but only succeeded in destroying a few trees. With no other weapons, I could do nothing but return to the meeting point.

But because the attack failed to kill enough soldiers, despite Vera’s sacrifice, they were finished with me. Two more dead was not enough for them. I was no longer a mujahideen.

- - - - - - - - - - -

I was no longer Rhea. I was no longer their sister. I was a foreigner, a thing. They would not say Oksana’s name. They would not acknowledge Vera’s courage. The men decided to teach me a lesson. I was tied down to the bed, only a few floors from where they had trained me. The men took turns. I saw that I was never one of them. They were the butchers, the infidels, the killers of innocence. Their claims of political grievances were only the excuses they used to justify their violence.

Sometime long after they had finished with me, I dragged myself from the room and out into the courtyard. I was surrounded by children who spit on me and called me names. Their mother came and called me a whore. I recognized her from my wedding. I had seduced the men, she said,

- - - - - - - - - - -

and I had gotten what I deserved.

They left me there. No one wanted to touch me or admit what they had done. I waited for someone to come with a rifle to end my suffering.

I was bleeding everywhere. I had been dying for months, and now it was nearly finished. I would lie down beneath a tree and close my eyes. Then Vera appeared to me, she gave me the strength to stand up again. That night, I carried my body to the woods. Stray dogs followed me.

Somehow, I found my way to a camp of Russian soldiers. I threw myself on their mercy. They were my saviors. They brought me to the hospital. I owe them everything.

- - - - - - - - - - -

I deeply regret my crimes, but I do not ask for forgiveness. I know I deserve no leniency. I will pay for their lives of those innocent soldiers with my own. I hope no one will follow my path. It leads only to death.

NOW IS THE TIME TO FOCUS CLOSELY ON THESE WORDS. HOLDING THEM UP TO REFLECT MY OWN FACE, I WILL FINALLY SEE THE FIRE AND KNOW WHAT IT IS.

I am not afraid of dying. I have been dead a long time. We have never been free.

- - - - - - - - - - -

I, the undersigned Rhea Aliyeva, confess to committing the crimes of which I have been accused.

16 September, 2009 year. Rhea Aliyeva

A second translation was done by adolgonosov on 28 August 2009, which shows the original to be accurate.

Analysis

There is a QR code to the right of Rhea's signature. When scanned, it leads to http://www.obolensk.org, apparently a login page.

The link is broken, but it is speculated that a 'phantom' page is located here that may be discoverable using the Alfa Cipher software.

Speculation

In Sept 2013, during the week that this confession is dated, the Alfa-Tsentr cam room feed showed Rhea writing in a journal. It is possible that she was writing this confession as we watched. Here is a video from 13 Sept 2009:

This theory is further supported by the fact that the pages of the document (in the PDF) have a shadow on the right or left margin of each page, alternating with page number. This indicates that at some point these pages were bound in some kind of notebook — maybe the one Rhea was writing in.

In the video, Rhea becomes very uncomfortable and agitated while writing, and eventually becomes completely hysterical, apparently threatening suicide with her pen. She is gassed into submission, and she and the journal are collected from the cell. This could be viewed as evidence that this confession was coerced.

Transcription

Here is a full transcription of the original text:

Talk

Add a New Comment
Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License