Version: Arkankergen faced assault, five detained

Frontier post ArkankergenA squad from the closest police station arrived at the place upon the call from a radio man.

"Mayday.. mayday. Arkan on the line... Taking fire! Need assistance!" shouted one of the frontier guards over the radio warning the others of an assault by unknown forces. Kazakh police tapped the message. The neighbors in China learnt of the attack on Kazakh frontier post as well. Operational group rushed to there and captured five of the attackers only to soon release them after unexpected interference of side forces.

President Nazarbayev claimed the attack on Arkankergen frontier post at Kazakh-Chinese border a terrorist action and announced national mourning. It's unlikely that he had an idea who was behind such a bold action that happened just before his trip to China. "This is nothing, but a sabotage," many thought then...

Arkankergen is a seasonal frontier post, directly subordinate to Sary-Bokter garrison. Aleksey Fomin was the commander of 'red dots' at the secret map, which allegedly was stolen by Private Chelakh. Fomin is the one who, according to the official version of the incident, is responsible for that we learned of the massacre almost three days later, as the post remained silent all this time. Captain Fomin didn't take any measures to find out what happened at the post he was in charge of. This is what the official version tells us.  

However, as we learnt, the situation at Arkankergen in those days was quite different: an armed group attacked the post and a radio man managed to communicate an alert over the local line...

Duty officer at the closest police station received the SOS signal. Once he heard the message from the radioman, several police units were sent to the site. Arrived police officers engaged in shootout and caught five attackers with weapons in possession. These were taken to local police station, where soon gathered high level officials of frontier and police troops. Among them was the post's commander Aleksey Fomin who saw the arrested and learnt of the incident.

Then our sources turned brief: an instruction from above said -- Release the detained and keep confidentiality! Of course, nobody wants to tell who put in a word for the real killers. But the 'above' well knew that to hide extermination of entire post at the state border is impossible.

Following this, as you are well aware, they found Private Chelakh hiding in mountains, who then became prime suspect. And the two soldiers of Arkankergen will apparently remain missing in action, as there weren't their bodies among the killed on the scene.

As our readers well remember, two months after the Arkankergen massacre and upon military prosecution's provision of 'indisputable proof' of Chelakh's guilt, our reporter visited Usharal, the area of the tragedy and villages near Sary-Bokter garrison.

People in the village of Konyr told our journalist that in those days some riflemen came down from the mountains to ask for water in poor Russian. Once inside a house, they nearly behaved as the hosts. Another woman whose door they knocked didn't figure out how many they were -- two or three -- and informed duly services about the night visit.

At the time, we didn't exempt the option that these people were the ones who killed forest ranger Ruslan Kim and soldiers of Arkankergen including captain Kereyev. Moreover, they had tortured the forest ranger and private Aganas before killing: as per some information, they broke the leg of the first and the arm of the latter. Probably, one of the attackers fell dead in the battle, therefore criminals had to burn all the killed beyond recognition.

To recall, officially, 14 men including the commander and contract soldiers had come into duty at the post on May 10. A forest ranger of private hunting farm Tastau-S LLP was performing his service nearby.

After a call from Konyr, search parties immediately arrived in the village. Now it is obvious why General Myrzaliyev came to the scene being on annual leave. Force structures sought for any, even minor evidences to trace the real guilty and soldiers who might have survived. Massive clean up of the area soon gave 'immediate results': as per initial reports, operational investigations group found private Chelakh.

"The guy is in stupor, doesn't understand anything. He is in prostration" then told a source of guljan.org involved in the investigation.

Another side that has the best cards in hand is the Chinese. As you remember, we were told the frontier service of China also had tapped the last alert from Arkankergen. It means, Arkankergen's SOS signal which is now top secret for Kazakhstan is in possession of neighboring country that may use it against Astana for own interests.

This complicates the situation in light of that for five months Kazakh authorities are having hard time thoroughly hiding the truth by imposing an absurd and biased version of Vladislav Chelakh the Killer, a common conscript soldier.

WKT citing Gujlan.org