1999 Russian apartment bombings: Difference between revisions

The Russian apartment bombings were a series of bombings in Russia that killed nearly 300 people and, together with Dagestan War, led the country into the Second Chechen War. The bombings happened over a span of two weeks in 1999 and stopped when three FSB agents were caught by the local police while planting a large bomb in an apartment block in the city of Ryazan. This incident was declared later to be a "training exercise" by FSB director Nikolai Patrushev.

The Russian authorities blamed the bombings on Chechen separatists, and, in response, ordered the invasion of Chechnya. According to investigation by the FSB, the bombing operation in Moscow was led by Achemez Gochiyaev who still remains at large and ordered by Chechen commander Amir Khattab who died from a poisoned letter delivered by an FSB agent.

Former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, Johns Hopkins University and Hoover Institute scholar David Satter,^[1], Russian lawmaker Sergei Yushenkov, historian Felshtinsky, and political scientist Pribylovsky asserted that the bombings were in fact a "false flag" attack perpetrated by the FSB (successor to the KGB) in order to legitimize the resumption of military activities in Chechnya and bring Vladimir Putin and the FSB to power, after, stated to be a training exercise, the FSB were caught by local police and citizens in the city of Ryazan planting a bomb with a detonator in the basement of an apartment building ^[2].

Russian Duma, on a pro-Kremlin party block vote, voted to seal all materials related to Ryazan incident for the next 75 years and forbade an investigation into what happened.

Independent investigator Mikhail Trepashkin found that the basement of one of the bombed buildings was rented by FSB officer Vladimir Romanovich, according to several witnesses testimonies. Trepashkin was unable to bring the evidence to the court, because he was arrested himself by the FSB and convicted by a closed court to four years for allegedly "disclosing state secrets". ^[3] Romanovich subsequently died in a hit and run incident in Cyprus. An independent investigation of the bombings was rendered ineffective because of the government stonewalling ^{[4] [5]}. Many people who tried to investigate the events, including Alexander Litvinenko and Russian Duma members Sergei Yushenkov and Yuri Shchekochikhin, have been assassinated or died under suspicious circumstances.^[6][7]

The bombings

The first bombing, which did not target an apartment, occurred in Moscow, the Russian capital, on August 31, 1999. A bomb exploded in a mall, killing one person and leaving 40 others wounded. A note was left saying the bombing was a result of increasing Russian consumerism.

Buynaksk

On September 4, 1999, a car bomb detonated outside an apartment building housing Russian soldiers and their families in the city of Buynaksk, in the Republic of Dagestan. Sixty-four people were killed and dozens of others were wounded. Russia blamed separatists from Chechnya, who days later invaded the Republic of Dagestan.

Moscow, Pechatniki

On September 8, 1999, 300 kg to 400 kg of explosives detonated on the ground floor of an apartment building in southeast Moscow. The nine-story building was destroyed, killing 94 people inside and wounded 150 others. A total of 108 apartments were destroyed during the bombing. A caller to a Russian news agency said the blast was a response to recent Russian bombing of Chechen and Dagestan villages in response to the invasion of Dagestan by Chechen separatists.

The owner of the Guryanov St., Moscow basement warehouse Mark Blumenfeld said the composite sketch of the man who rented his basement was later replaced with an unlike sketch. Mr. Blumenfeld pointed that the inquest pressured him at Lefortovo to testify against Gochiyaev, the man identified by the latter sketch.^[8]

Moscow, Kashirskoye highway

September 13, 1999, was supposed to be a day of mourning for the victims of the previous bomb attacks. But on that day, a large bomb exploded at an apartment on Kashirskoye Highway in southern Moscow. The eight-story building was flattened, littering the street with debris and throwing some concrete hundreds of yards away. In all, 118 people died and 200 were wounded.

It was at this time when Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin declared a war against the "illegal military units" in Chechnya. Though there was not much evidence pointing to Chechens, preparations were made by the Russian military forces to re-enter the province and to strip the Chechen leaders of their powers.

Volgodonsk

The motive for the forceful solution was clinched when a truck bomb exploded September 16, 1999, outside a nine-story apartment complex in the southern Russian city of Volgodonsk, killing 17 people.

In response, Russia launched air strikes on Chechen rebel positions, oil refineries, and other buildings inside that province. By the end of September it was clear another war over Chechnya was underway, and by October Russian troops had entered the province. The attacks would not be the last in Russia or Chechnya.

Ryazan incident

On the evening of September 22, 1999, an alert resident of an apartment building in the town of Ryazan noticed strangers who carried something into the basement from a car with a Moscow license plate ^[1]. Yuri Tkachenko, the head of the local bomb squad, disconnected the detonator and bomb timing device and tested three sacks of a white substance with MO-2 gas analyzer. The substance was identified as hexogen, the military-type explosive used in all previous bombings ^[1]. But undermining of 3 kilograms of a substance taken from bags was unfortunate - the explosion did not happen.^[9]

Police and rescue vehicles converged from different parts of the city, and 30,000 residents have been evacuated from the area. 1,200 local police officers with automatic weapons set up roadblocks on highways around the city and started patrolling railroad stations and airports to hunt the terrorists down. In the morning, "Ryazan resembled a city under siege" ^[1].

At 8 a.m. September 23 Russian television networks officially reported the attempt to blow up building in Ryzan using hexogen. Main announcement was made by the minister of internal affairs Vladimir Rushailo. At 7 p.m. Vladimir Putin announced that air bombing of Grozny has began.

Late in the evening of September 23, the perpetrators were caught. A telephone service employee tapped into long-distance phone conversations managed to detect a conversation in which an out-of-town person suggested to "split up and each of you make your own way out". That person's number was found to belong to an FSB office in Moscow. When arrested, the detainees produced FSB identification cards. They soon have been released on orders from Moscow. The names and further fate of three FSB agents who conducted this operation remain unknown.

Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti declared that the incident was a training exercise forty-eight hours later.^[10] The original chemical test was declared to be an error. The public inquiry committee could not come to a complete conclusion on this and other incidents due to incoherent answers from federal bodies. The General Prosecutor's office has closed the criminal investigation of the Ryazan incident in April 2000.

Explosives controversy

Yuri Tkachenko, the police explosives expert who defused the Ryazan bomb insisted that it was real, contrary to the statements of FSB officials. Tkachenko said that the explosives, including a timer, power source, and detonator were genuine military equipment and obviously prepared by a professional. He also said that the gas analyzer that tested the vapors coming from the sacks unmistakably indicated the presence of hexogen. Tkachenko said that it was out of the question that the analyzer could have malfunctioned, as the gas analyzer was of world class quality, costing $20,000 and was maintained by a specialist who worked according to a strict schedule, checking the analyzer after each use and making frequent prophylactic checks. Tkachenko pointed out that meticulous care in the handling of the gas analyzer was a necessity because the lives of the bomb squad's experts depended on the reliability of their equipment. The police officers who answered the original call and discovered the bomb also insisted that the incident was not an exercise and that it was obvious from its appearance that the substance in the bomb was not sugar.^[1][11]

In 2002 deputy of Russian Parliament Aleksandr Kulikov requested the General Prosecutor's Office on the results of investigation of criminal cases incited by facts of explosions of blocks of apartments in Moscow, Volgodonsk and discovering of explosive devices in Ryazan; answer of Russian Deputy Prosecutor Vasiliy Kolmogorov was then published in Russian media.^[12] According to it, express analysys of the discovered substance made by detectors "Exprei" и "М-02" showd controversial results. To remove the controversy, three 3 kg samples were taken from the sacks in question and blown up at the testing area; in all cases no explosion followed. During the additional investigation ordered by the General Prosecutor's Office, an explosives examination was made which showd that "the sacks contained sucrose — disaccharide based on glucopyranose and fructofuranose. No traces of tertiary explosives (TNT, RDX, HMX, PETN, nitroglycerin, tetryl, picric acid) were found in the examined substance. Investigation of clocks, elements of power supply, shell, bulb and wires showd that although these items constituted a single electronic block, it wasn't capable of giving voltage when alarm of the timer was triggered and isn't a blasting device". It was also noted that "mission in Ryazan was not properly planned and done, in particular the question of limits of carrying out this action was not properly specified, no provision was made for information sharing with representatives of local bodies or bodies of law and order about the training character of the implant in case it was discovered."^[12]

Official investigation

According to the official investigation,^[13] the apartment bombings were planned and organized by Amir Khattab and Abu Umar, Arab militants fighting in Chechnya on the side of Chechen insurgents. Both of whom were later killed during the Second Chechen War. The planning was carried out in Khattab's guerilla camps in Chechnya, "Caucasus" in Shatoy and "Taliban" in Avtury. ^[13]

According to the Russian state Prosecutor office ^[14], all bombing operations in Moscow and Volgodonsk were organized and led by an ethnic Karachay Achemez Gochiyayev. The explosives were prepared at a fertilizer factory in Urus-Martan, Chechnya, by mixing hexogen, TNT, aluminium powder and nitre with sugar. From there they were sent to a food storage facility in Kislovodsk, which was managed by an uncle of one of the terrorists, Yusuf Krymshakhalov. Another conspirator, Ruslan Magayayev, had leased a KamAZ truck in which the sacks were stored for two months. After everything was planned, the participants were organized into several groups which then transported the explosives to different cities. Most of the people participating were not ethnic Chechens.

Batchayev and Krymshakhalov admitted transporting a truckload of explosives to Moscow but said "they have never been in touch with Chechen warlords and did not knew Gochiyaev" ^[15]. They said that someone "who posed as a jihad leader had duped them into the operation" by hiring to transport his expolosives, and they later realized this man was working for the FSB ^[15]

Suspects

According to the official investigation, the following people either delivered explosives, stored them, or harbored other suspects:

Moscow bombings

• Achemez Gochiyayev (has not been arrested; he is still at large ^[16])
• Denis Saitakov (killed in Chechnya^[14])
• Khakim Abayev (killed by FSB special forces in May 2004 in Ingushetia^[17])
• Ravil Akhmyarov (killed in Chechnya ^[14])
• Yusuf Krymshamkhalov (arrested in Georgia, extradited to Russia and sentenced to life imprisonment in January 2004, after a two-month secret trial held without a jury^{[18] [15]})
• Stanislav Lyubichev (a traffic police inspector who helped the truck with explosives pass the checkpoint after getting a sack of sugar as a bribe, sentenced to 4 years in May 2003^[19])

Volgodonsk bombing

• Timur Batchayev (killed in Georgia in the clash with police during which Krymshakhalov was arrested^[14])
• Zaur Batchayev (killed in Chechnya^[14])
• Adam Dekkushev (arrested in Georgia, threw a grenade at police during the arrest, extradited to Russia and sentenced to life imprisonment in January 2004, after a two-month secret trial held without a jury^{[18] [15]})

Buinaksk bombing

• Isa Zainutdinov (sentenced to life imprisonment in March 2001^[20])
• Alisultan Salikhov (sentenced to life imprisonment in March 2001^[20])
• Magomed Salikhov (arrested in Azerbaijan in November 2004, extradited to Russia, found not guilty on the charge of terrorism by the jury on January 24, 2006; found guilty on other related charges such as participating in an illegal armed force and illegal crossing of the national border,^[21] the Supreme Court has found some procedural issues with that decision and decided that a retrial was necessary, but on November 13, 2006, he was again found not guilty, this time on all charges, including the ones he was found guilty of in the first trial.^[22] Salikhov admitted that he provided a truck to Ibn al-Khattab and made a delivery of what he believed was paint for him, but he claimed he didn't know that Khattab was planning a terrorist act, and the jurors agreed.^[23])
• Ziyavudin Ziyavudinov (arrested in Kazakhstan, extradited to Russia, sentenced to 24 years in April 2002^[24])
• Abdulkadyr Abdulkadyrov (sentenced to 9 years in March 2001^[20])
• Magomed Magomedov (sentenced to 9 years in March 2001^[20])
• Zainutdin Zainutdinov (sentenced to 3 years in March 2001 and immediately released under amnesty^[20])
• Makhach Abdulsamedov (sentenced to 3 years in March 2001 and immediately released under amnesty^[20]).

Attempts at independent investigation

The Russian Duma rejected two motions for parliamentary investigation of the Ryazan incident.^[25][26] Duma, on a pro-Kremlin party block vote, voted to seal all materials related to Ryazan incident for the next 75 years and forbade an investigation into what happened.

An independent public commission to investigate the bombings chaired by Duma deputy Sergei Kovalev was rendered ineffective because of government refusal to respond to its inquiries.^[4][5] Two key members of the Kovalev Commission, Sergei Yushenkov and Yuri Shchekochikhin, both Duma members, have since died in apparent assassinations in April 2003 and July 2003 respectively.^[6][7] The Commission's lawyer Mikhail Trepashkin has been arrested in October 2003 to become one of the better-known political prisoners in Russia. Another member of the commission, Otto Lacis, was brutally beaten^[27] in November 2003 and two years later on November 3 2005 died in hospital after a car accident.^[28]

Theory of FSB involvement

The Ryazan incident on September 22, 1999 prompted the initial speculation in the Western press that the Moscow bombings were organized by the FSB, the Russian domestic intelligence service, the successor of the KGB.^[29]

The FSB were caught by local police and citizens in the city of Ryazan planting a bomb with a detonator in the basement of an apartment building at the address of 14/16 Novosyelov on the night of September 22, 1999.^[30] Explosives experts arriving at the scene found that the bomb tested positive for hexogen (i.e., RDX).^[30] On 23 September 1999, the NTV channel reported in the 16 - hour news that at the examination in the bags were not found explosives.^[31] On September 24, 1999, Nikolai Patrushev, the head of the FSB, said on the NTV channel that the bomb in the basement of the apartment had been a dummy and that the FSB had been conducting a test.^[32] The FSB officially stated that the gas analyzer that detected hexogen had malfunctioned, and that the substance in the dummy bomb was sugar.^[11]

In December 1999 Robert Young Pelton interviewed GRU officer Aleksey Galkin who was captured by Chechen rebels while in Grozny during the Russian siege, under surveillance of Abu Movsayev - director of state security department of self-proclaimed Ichkerian Republic.^[33] Galkin, who was a rebel's prisoner, allegedly admitted to Pelton that the apartment bombing in Buynaksk was organized by a GRU team under general command of the head of the 14th section of the Central Intelligence Office, Lt. Gen. Kostechko, and GRU director Valentin Korabelnikov.^[34][35][36] Pelton writes about this in his book Three Worlds Gone Mad.^[37] However, it has been claimed that Chechen rebels tortured Galkin to extort this confession.^[35][33]

The BBC Channel 4's Dispatches programme "Dying for the President" screened on March 9, 2000 and a subsequent article in The Observer alleged that their journalists put Russian "secret police in [the] frame for Moscow atrocities".^[38]

The Russian NTV channel hosted a talk with the residents of the Ryazan apartment building along with FSB members Alexander Zdanovich and gen. Sergeyev on March 20, 2000. The talk was aired on March 24. The FSB members refused to provide the name of the head of the training exercise, if there was any. On March 26 Boris Nemtsov voiced his concern over the possible shut-down of NTV for airing the talk.^[39]

Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB officer, claimed that apartment bombings were organized by the FSB and the GRU agents in the book Gang from Lubyanka he co-authored with Yuri Felshtinsky. On 29 December 2003 Russian authorities confiscated over 5000 copies of the book en route to Moscow from the publisher in Latvia.^[40] Litvinenko also published the book Blowing up Russia: Terror from within. A movie with the same title was produced.^[41] The film accused Russian special services of organizing the explosions in Volgodonsk and Moscow. According to research carried out by two French journalists, Jean-François Deniau and Charles Gazelle, the explosions were carried out by FSB to provide justification for the continuation of the Second Chechen War, which in turn helped Putin beat the communists in the presidential election of 2000.^{[citation needed]} The movie and Litvinenko books were partially sponsored by Russian businessmen Boris Berezovsky whose impartiality in this case has been challenged in Russian media.

In April 2002 on a visit to Washington, Duma member Sergei Yushenkov pointed to a mysterious remark by the Duma speaker Gennadiy Seleznyov, from which it appeared that Seleznyov had known about one of the explosions three days before the fact.^[42][43][44] The Russian Public Prosecutor's Office had replied to Yushenkov's inquiry by stating that Seleznyov was referring to an unrelated hand grenade-based explosion, which indeed happened in Volgodonsk three days earlier.^[45]

A documentary "Nedoverie" ("Disbelief"^[46][47]) about the bombing controversy by Russian director Andrei Nekrasov was premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. The film chronicles the story of Tatyana and Alyona Morozova, the two Russian-American sisters, who had lost their mother in the attack, and decided to find out who did it.^[48]

Mikhail Trepashkin, appointed by a public committee, set up by four members of the Russian parliament, to investigate the bombings, was convicted on an unrelated state secret charge in May 2004. Trepashkin was arrested shortly before he was to make his findings public.^[49] The article states that FSB agent Vladimir Romanovich was identified by several witnesses as the man who rented the basement of one of the bombed buildings; Romanovich subsequently died in a car crash in Cyprus. Trepashkin's wife declared that the police planted the weapon in order to fabricate a case against her husband.^[50][51] Amnesty International issued a concern that "there are serious grounds to believe that Mikhail Trepashkin was arrested and convicted under falsified criminal charges which may be politically-motivated, in order to prevent him continuing his investigative and legal work related to the 1999 apartment bombings in Moscow and other cities". ^[52]

On January 18 2003, Yuri Felshtinsky provided Novaya Gazeta with a video recording and its transcript.^[53] The video dated August 20 2002, contained an interview with unknown individual claiming to be Achemez Gochiyayev. The authors edited out the names of an FSB agent and another person from the interviewee's story. The authors asked for money in exchange for the missing details. In February 2005 Felshtinsky received an audio cassette and a written statement from an unnamed mediator without pay. The statement made by Gochiyayev or orchestrated by his kidnappers said that he was just an unknowing participant in a plot organized by an undercover FSB agent, his former acquaintance Ramazan Dyshekov.^[54] This story contradicted the name of the FSB agent Vladimir Romanovich disclosed by Trepashkin one day before his arrest.^[55]

Among Western scholars, the theory of FSB involvement in the bombings has been championed by Johns Hopkins University and Hoover Institute scholar David Satter, the former Financial Times correspondent in Moscow, in his book Darkness at Dawn: the Rise of the Russian Criminal State (ISBN 0-300-09892-8, published by Yale University Press).^[56]

Criticism and support of FSB involvement theory

Criticism

The involvement of the FSB in the bombings has been widely discussed in news reports. Some of them discussed claims by Satter, Litvinenko and others as a "conspiracy theory" ^{[57][58] [59] [60][61]} As for example almost all the critics, same as the "independent investigation" were directly sponsored by Boris Berezovsky, who is allied in London with former Chechen warlord, Ahmed Zakayev,^[62] and stated that he was working on overthrowing the administration of Vladimir Putin by force.^[63]

Support

One of this theory supporters was U.S. Senator and presidential candidate John McCain. He said that "there remain credible allegations that Russia's FSB had a hand in carrying out these attacks" [5].

The assassination of Alexander Litvinenko, allegedly by Russian agents also gave credence to this theory, according to Alexander Goldfarb and Marina Litvinenko. They wrote in their book Death of a Dissident that Litvineko murder was "the most compelling proof" of this theory. According to the book ", the murder of Litvineko by Russian agents "gave credence to all his previous theories, delivering justice for the tenants of the bombed apartment blocks, the Moscow theater-goers, Yushenkov, Shchekochikhin, and Anna Politkovskaya, and the half-exterminated nation of Chechnya, exposing their killers for the whole world to see." ^[64].

One "highly recpected journalist team", asked a rhetorical question "Was Vladimir Putin . . . implicated in an atrocious conspiracy to justify the terrible Chechen war? Were the Moscow bombings . . . part of the bloody price that had to be paid to get him elected to the Kremlin?" This has now been backed up by several leading Russian figures, including the media mogul Boris Berezovsky, now in self-imposed exile." According to them, although this sounds far-fetched, one should "remember that the FSB is simply the renamed KGB, whose raison d'etre for decades was essentially institutional terror in the service of the government. Putin is himself an ex-KGB man, and he has twice blocked, through the Duma, any independent investigation into the bombings. No evidence of Chechen involvement has ever been forthcoming, and the Chechen groups have claimed that they were not responsible - although they admit to other acts of violence. The Ryazan "training exercise" excuse is preposterous. It does seem to suggest that the Russian secret services were caught red-handed."^[65]

Chronology of events

• July 1998: Vladimir Putin was appointed Director of the FSB
• September 1998: Yevgeny Primakov, a KGB veteran, becomes Prime Minister of Russia
• May 12 1999: Sergei Stepashin, a former FSB Director, becomes Prime Minister of Russia
• August 8 1999: Shamil Basayev's forces invade Dagestan.
• August 9 1999: Vladimir Putin, a former FSB Director, becomes Prime Minister of Russia
• September 4 1999: Bombing in Buynaksk, 64 people killed, 133 are injured.
• September 9 1999: Bombing in Moscow, Pechatniki, 94 people are killed, 249 are injured.
• September 13 1999: Bombing in Moscow, Kashirskoye highway, 118 are killed.
• September 16 1999: Bombing in Volgodonsk, 18 are killed, 288 injured.
• September 22 1999: FSB agents were caught while planting the bomb in Ryazan. The sequence of bombings has stopped.
• September 23 1999: 24 Russian governors demands to transfer all state powers to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, according to Sergei Yushenkov^[66]
• September 24 1999: Second Chechen War begins
• December 31 1999: President Boris Yeltsin resigns. Putin is appointed as acting President.
• March 26 2000: Vladimir Putin wins presidential elections.

References

See also

• Dagestan War
• Aleksander Litvinenko
• Maxim Lazovsky

External links

• Full Text of Robert Young Pelton's 1999 interview with GRU officer Alexei Viktorovich Galkin in Grozny
• "Poisoned spy defiant in final interview before his death". Richard Beeston, Diplomatic Editor, The Times, November 23, 2006.
• "The Shadow of Ryazan: Who Was Behind the Strange Russian Apartment Bombings in September 1999?", David Satter, The Hudson Institute, April 19, 2002.
• "Fear of Doing the Boss a Disservice", Moscow Times, April 11, 2002, p. 8.
• "'Gospodin Geksogen' ('Mr. Hexogen')", Dr. Alexandr Nemets and Dr. Thomas Torda, NewsMax.com, July 19, 2002.
• "'Mr. Hexogen' (Continued)", Dr. Alexandr Nemets and Dr. Thomas Torda, NewsMax.com, July 23, 2002.
• JF: U.S. Grants Alyona Morozova Political Asylum.
• The blasts which shook Russia, August 10, 2000, BBC
• Russia apartment bombs: Two jailed, January 12, 2004, CNN.
• "Assassination of Russia" — "Покушение на Россию" Template:Ru icon A 52-minute documentary (in Russian), using footage originally shot by NTV is available for downloading from this site. The film examines Russian apartment bombings and focuses on the foiled bombing in Ryazan. It can be viewed in English online via an Indymedia upload or ordered at the Terror 99 web site. The script in English is available on Yuri Felshtinsky's website.
• Timeline: Terrorism in Russia, February 6, 2004, CNN
• The Terror of 9/99: Fact Sheet
• The request of the Chairman of the public inquiry committee Kovalyov to the Director of FSB Template:Ru icon, translation, April 8, 2002.
• The answer of the Secretary of the Director of FSB to the Kovalyov's request Template:Ru icon, translation, May 8, 2002.
• The answer of the General Prosecutor office to the request of the Duma member Kulikov Template:Ru icon, translation, Spring, 2002.
• Journalist investigation by Novaya Gazeta Template:Ru icon; translation.
• 'Disbelief' by Andrei Nekrasov — documentary about Moscow Apartment Bombings; Google Video Template:En icon, Template:Ru icon.
• The Operation "Successor" by Vladimir Pribylovsky and Yuriy Felshtinsky (in Russian).