Latvians recount Moscow hostage ordeal

Three Latvians who were among the more than 800 people held hostage in Moscow by Chechen rebels returned home to a hero's welcome Tuesday, saying they never gave up hope during the terrifying three-day ordeal.

"I believed all along we would be saved, and toward the end, that at least one member of my family would be saved," said a teary-eyed Margarita Dubina, 54, who was watching the popular musical "Nord-Ost" with children Aleksandrs Zelcermanis and Kira Zelcermane when heavily-armed Chechen rebels stormed the theater and took everyone inside hostage.

The rebels, including women armed with explosives and automatic weapons, said they would start executing hostages unless Russia agreed to end its three-year-old war in the break-away republic of Chechnya.

The stand-off ended in a pre-dawn siege by Russian special forces in which most of the nearly 50 rebels and 118 hostages died, most from an unidentified paralyzing gas used to neutralize the hostage-takers.

Family and friends clutching flowers and hundreds of students from Riga Public School No. 22, where Dubina teaches chemistry, greeted the family at Riga airport.

"It was all very frightening. We had the TV news on at school every day and nearly everyone was glued to it," said Katerina, 15, one of Dubina's students, as she waited with classmates in the airport's arrivals hall.

Flanked by father of the family Bronislavs Zelcermanis, who rushed to Moscow last week when he learned his family was inside the theater, the three spoke to journalists about the ordeal.

The mother and son had traveled to Moscow to visit Zelcermane, 21, who studies social psychology in the Russian capital.

Aleksandrs Zelcermanis, 28, said he first mistook the guerrillas, some of them wearing masks and shooting in the air, for part of the show when they stormed the theater in southeastern Moscow shortly after the play began.

"The first 15 minutes, I couldn't believe it was happening. I thought it was some modern-theater spectacle," said Zelcermanis.

After the Chechens released children under 15, he said they separated foreigners and Russian citizens, moving the former up to the first few rows of the theater and promising to eventually release them.

Meanwhile, hostages were fed only chocolate and chewing gum and had to use the orchestra pit as a toilet, as the gunmen refused to let them leave the hall.

At one point, the Chechens threatened to kill 10 hostages for any one of them killed by Russian special forces, he said.

"As a foreigner, I was sitting in the front row right between some of the terrorists, so if it had come to that, I would have been among the first to meet this fate," Zelcermanis said.

Zelcermane said the Chechens were mostly civil to their captives. "They weren't too angry or mean to us, they told us all they wanted was peace in Chechnya."

When Russian special forces stormed the theater the morning of Oct. 26, Dubina said "it seemed like the beginning of a war."

Zelcermane said the hostages were ordered to lie down with their faces to the ground when the battle started. "It was terrifying, all the noise, but I didn't see a thing. When the gas started coming in, I lost consciousness and the next thing I knew, I was lying in a hospital emergency room," she said.

None was severely injured, though Dubina was treated for gas inhalation. She said she was told to visit doctors at least two times a year for check-ups.

Russian officials have refused to provide details of the gas despite pleas from doctors. More than 400 of the freed captives remain hospitalized, 45 in grave condition.

U.S. officials said they had identified the gas as an opiate.

Zelcermanis and Dubina backed the decision of Russian special forces to use a paralyzing gas to end the stand-off.

"The means chosen were probably best," Dubina said. "Had they made an armed attack, the terrorists would have blown up the building and there would have been many more victims."

But Zelcermanis said police and politicians should be held responsible for allowing the guerrillas to get into the theater in the first place.

"The special forces should not be blamed. It's a disgrace for the Russian authorities....that 40-50 armed fighters were able to stroll into Moscow and take the theater unnoticed."

"I don't know what to think about all that, there are so many aspects of the whole thing," said a visibly exhausted Zelcermane. "I'm supposed to go back to school in a few days, so now, I need to recover."