and the Moscow theatre hostage crisis of 2002, incidents in which hundreds of Russian civilians were held hostage by Chechen terrorists led by Basayev. Basayev said that his Riyad-us Saliheen "brigade of martyrs" had carried out the attack and also claimed responsibility for a series of terrorist bombings in Russia in the weeks before the Beslan crisis. He said that he had originally planned to seize at least one school in either Moscow or Saint Petersburg, but lack of funds forced him to pick North Ossetia, "the Russian garrison in the North Caucasus." Basayev blamed the Russian authorities for "a terrible tragedy" in Beslan. Basayev claimed that he had miscalculated the Kremlin's determination to end the crisis by all means possible. He said he was "cruelly mistaken" and that he was "not delighted by what happened there", but also added to be "planning more Beslan-type operations in the future because we are forced to do so." However, it was the last major act of terrorism in Russia until 2009, as Basayev was soon persuaded to give up indiscriminate attacks by new terrorist leader Abdul-Halim Sadulayev, who made Basayev his second-in-command but banned hostage-taking, kidnapping for ransom and operations specifically targeting civilians. Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov denied that his forces were involved in the siege, calling it "a blasphemy" for which "there is no justification". Maskhadov described the perpetrators of Beslan as "Madmen" driven out of their senses by Russian acts of brutality. He condemned the action and all attacks against civilians via a statement issued by his envoy Akhmed Zakayev in London, blaming it on what he called a radical local group, and he agreed to the North Ossetian proposition to act as a negotiator. Later, he also called on western governments to initiate peace talks between Russia and Chechnya and added to "categorically refute all accusations by the Russian government that President Maskhadov had any involvement in the Beslan event." Putin responded that he would not negotiate with "child-killers", comparing the calls for negotiations with the appeasement of Hitler, and put a $10 million bounty on Maskhadov (the same amount as for Basayev). Maskhadov was killed by Russian commandos in Chechnya on 8 March 2005 and buried at an undisclosed location. Shortly after the crisis, official Russian sources stated that the attackers were part of a supposed international group led by Basayev that included a number of Arabs