Russian apartment bombings
Encyclopedia
The Russian apartment bombings were a series of explosions that hit four apartment blocks in the Russia
n cities of Buynaksk
, Moscow
, and Volgodonsk
in September 1999, killing 293 people and injuring 651. The explosions occurred in Buynaksk on 4 September, Moscow on 9 and 13 September, and Volgodonsk on 16 September. Several other bombs were defused in Moscow at the time.
A similar bomb was found and defused in the Russian city of Ryazan
on 23 September 1999. On the next day Federal Security Service Director Nikolai Patrushev announced that the Ryazan incident had been a training exercise.
Together with the Invasion of Dagestan launched from Chechnya in August 1999 by Islamist
militia led by Shamil Basayev
and Ibn al-Khattab
, the bombings caused the Russian Federation to launch the Second Chechen War
.
Although on 2 September 1999, the militia commander Ibn Al-Khattab
announced that "The mujahideen of Dagestan are going to carry out reprisals in various places across Russia," on 14 September he denied responsibility for the blasts, adding that he was fighting the Russian army, not women and children.
An official investigation of the bombings was completed by the Russian Federal Security Service in 2002. According to the investigation and the court ruling that followed, the bombings were organized by Achemez Gochiyaev
, who remained at large as of 2010, and ordered by Ibn Al-Khattab and Abu Omar al-Saif
, who were later killed. Six other suspects have been convicted by Russian courts.
State Duma member Yuri Shchekochikhin
filed two motions for a parliamentary investigation of the events, but the motions were rejected by the Duma in March 2000. An independent public commission to investigate the bombings was chaired by Duma deputy Sergei Kovalev
. The commission was rendered ineffective because of government refusal to respond to its inquiries. The Commission's lawyer Mikhail Trepashkin
was arrested for exposing classified information.
Yury Felshtinsky (resides in the USA), Alexander Litvinenko
(assassinated in 2006), Boris Berezovsky (oligarch in British exile), David Satter
, Boris Kagarlitsky, Vladimir Pribylovsky
, the secessionist Chechen authorities claimed that the 1999 bombings were a false flag
attack coordinated by the FSB in order to win public support for a new full-scale war in Chechnya, which boosted Prime Minister and former FSB Director Vladimir Putin
's popularity, and brought the pro-war Unity Party
to the State Duma
and Putin to the presidency within a few months.
Gordon Bennett from Conflict Studies Research Centre
, Robert Bruce Ware
, Paul J. Murphy, Henry Plater-Zyberk
, Simon Saradzhyan
, Nabi Abdullaev and Richard Sakwa
criticized the conspiracy theory, pointing out problems such as the lack of evidence.
in Vladikavkaz, North Ossetia-Alania on March 19, 1999 killing 62 and injuring many.
A Finnish journalist who in mid-August 1999, before the bombings, travelled to the village of Karamakhi
in Dagestan
, interviewed some villagers and their military Commander General Dzherollak. The journalist wrote: "The Wahhabis' trucks go all over Russia. Even one wrong move in Moscow or Makhachkala, they warn, will lead to bombs and bloodshed everywhere." According to the journalist the Wahhabis had told him, "if they start bombing us, we know where our bombs will explode." In the last days of August, Russian military launched an aerial bombing of the villages.
, killing 38 people. It was conjectured that the group responsible for the Russian apartment bombings might also have had links to the Moscow Metro bombings.
was used, and the timers were set to go off at night and inflict the maximum number of civilian casualties. The explosives were placed to destroy the weakest, most critical elements of the buildings and force the buildings to "collapse like a house of cards". The terrorists were able to obtain or manufacture several tons of powerful explosives and deliver them to numerous destinations across Russia
detonated outside a five story apartment building in the city of Buynaksk
in Dagestan
, near the border of Chechnya. The building was housing Russian border guard
soldiers and their families. 64 people were killed and 133 were injured in the explosion. Another car bomb was found and defused in the same town. The defused bomb was in a car containing 2,706 kilograms of explosives. It was discovered by local residents in a parking lot surrounded by an army hospital and residential buildings.
. Residents said a few minutes before the blast four men were seen speeding away from the building in a car.
The President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin
ordered the search of 30,000 residential buildings in Moscow for explosives. He took personal control of the investigation of the blast. Vladimir Putin declared 13 September a day of mourning for the victims of the attacks.
, official investigators defused explosives on Borisovskiye Prudy street in Moscow 14 September 1999. Yuri Felshtinsky and Alexander Litvinenko added a site in the Liublino district and another in Kapotnya to the list of caches. Satter wrote that three attempted bombings were prevented.
According to the messages received by Yuri Felshtinsky and by Prima News agency from someone claiming to be Achemez Gochiyaev
, on 13 September 1999 a bomb was defused in a building in the Kapotnya area. A warehouse containing several tons of explosives and six timing devices was found at Borisovskiye Prudy. The author of the messages wrote that he called the police and warned about the bombing locations, which helped to prevent a large number of further casualties. Gochiyaev or his impersonators claimed that he was framed by his old acquaintance, an FSB officer who asked him to rent basements "as storage facilities" at four locations where bombs were later found.
, killing 17 people and injuring 69. The bombing took place at 5:57 am. Surrounding buildings were also damaged. The blast also happened nine miles from a nuclear power plant. Prime Minister Putin signed a decree calling on law enforcement and other agencies to develop plans within three days to protect industry, transportation, communications, food processing centers and nuclear complexes.
noticed two suspicious men who carried sacks into the basement from a car with a Moscow license plate.
, 27 January 2000
, Cryptome
, 24 November 2000 He alerted the police, but by the time they arrived the car and the men were gone. The policemen found three 50 kg sacks of white powder in the basement. A detonator
and a timing device
were attached and armed. The timer was set to 5:30 AM. Yuri Tkachenko, the head of the local bomb squad
, disconnected the detonator and the timer and tested the three sacks of white substance with a "MO-2" gas analyzer
. The device detected traces of RDX
, the military explosive used in all previous bombings. Police and rescue vehicles converged from different parts of the city, and 30,000 residents were evacuated from the area. 1,200 local police officers armed with automatic weapons set up roadblock
s on highways around the city and started patrolling railroad stations and airports to hunt the terrorists down.
At 1:30 A.M. on 23 September, the explosive engineers took a bit of substance from the suspicious-looking sacks to a firing ground located some kilometers away from Ryazan for testing. During the substance tests at that area they tried to explode it by means of a detonator, but their efforts failed, the substance was not detonated, and the explosion did not occur. At 5 A.M. Radio Rossiya reported about the attempted bombing noting that the bomb was set up to go off at 5:30 A.M. In the morning, "Ryazan resembled a city under siege". Composite sketches of three suspected terrorists, two men and a woman, were posted everywhere in the city and shown on TV. At 8:00 A.M. Russian television reported the attempt to blow out the building in Ryzan and identified the explosive used in the bomb as RDX
. Vladimir Rushailo
announced later that police prevented a terrorist act. A news block at 4 p.m. reported that the explosives failed to detonate during their testing outside the city
At 7 P.M. Prime Minister of Russia
Vladimir Putin
praised the vigilance of the Ryazanians and called for the air bombing of the Chechen capital Grozny
in response to the terrorism acts. He said:
Later, the same evening, a telephone service employee in Ryazan tapped into long distance phone conversations and managed to detect a talk in which an out-of-town person suggested to others that they "split up" and "make your own way out". That person's number was traced to a telephone exchange unit
serving FSB offices. When arrested, the detainees produced FSB identification cards. They were soon released on orders from Moscow.
On 24 September, FSB director Nikolai Patrushev announced that the exercise was carried out to test responses after the earlier blasts. The Ryazan FSB "reacted with fury" and issued a statement saying:
FSB issued a public apology about the incident.
. However Yuri Tkachenko, the police explosives expert who defused the Ryazan bomb, insisted that it was real. Tkachenko said that the explosives, including a timer, a power source, and a 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 RDX. Tkachenko said that it was out of the question that the analyzer could have malfunctioned, as the gas analyzer was of world class quality, cost $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 experts depended on the reliability of their equipment. The police officers who answered the original call and discovered the bomb also insisted that it was obvious from its appearance that the substance in the bomb was not sugar.
At a press conference on the occasion of the Federal Security Service Employee Day in December 2001 Yury Tkachenko, the police explosives expert who defused the Ryazan bomb, said that the gas analyzer had not been used. He added that the detonator was a hunting cartridge and that it would not be able to detonate any known explosives.
(or "hexogen"). However, it was officially declared later that the explosive was not RDX, but a mixture of aluminum powder, niter
(saltpeter), sugar
, and TNT prepared by the perpetrators in a concrete mixer
at a fertilizer factory in Urus-Martan
, Chechnya. RDX is produced in only one factory in Russia, in the city of Perm
. According to Satter, the FSB changed the story about the type of explosive, since it was difficult to explain how huge amounts of RDX disappeared from the closely guarded Perm facility.
reported the account of Private Alexei Pinyaev of the 137th Regiment who guarded a military facility near the city of Ryazan. He was surprised to see that "a storehouse with weapons and ammunition" contained sacks with the word "sugar" on them. The two paratroopers cut a hole in one of the bags and made tea with the sugar taken from the bag. But the taste of the tea was terrible. They became suspicious since people were talking about the explosions. The substance turned out to be hexogen. After the newspaper report, FSB officers "descended on Pinyaev's unit", accused them of "divulging a state secret", and told them "You guys can't even imagine what serious business you've got yourselves tangled up in." The regiment later sued Novaya Gazeta for insulting the honor of the Russian Army, since there was no Private Alexei Pinyaev in the regiment, according to their statement. At an FSB press conference Private Pinyaev stated that there was no hexogen in the 137th Airborne Regiment and that he was hospitalized in December 1999 and no longer visited the range.
of the Communist Party made an announcement: "I have just received a report. According to information from Rostov-on-Don, an apartment building in the city of Volgodonsk
was blown up last night". However, the bombing in Volgodonsk took place three days later, on 16 September. When the Volgodonsk bombing happened, Vladimir Zhirinovsky
demanded an explanation in the Duma, but Seleznev turned his microphone off.
Two years later, in March 2002, Seleznyov claimed in an interview that he had been referring to an unrelated hand grenade
-based explosion, which did not kill anyone and did not destroy any buildings, and which indeed happened in Volgodonsk. It remains unclear why Seleznyov reported such an insignificant incident to the Russian Parliament and why he did not explain the misunderstanding to Zhirinovsky and other Duma members.
FSB defector
Alexander Litvinenko
described this as "the usual Kontora
mess up": "Moscow-2 was on the 13th and Volgodonsk on 16th, but they got it to the speaker the other way around," he said. Investigator Mikhail Trepashkin
confirmed that the man who gave Seleznev the note was indeed an FSB officer.
, voted to seal all materials related to the Ryazan incident for the next 75 years and forbade an investigation into what happened.
to investigate the case. Trepashkin found that the basement of one of the bombed buildings was rented by FSB officer Vladimir Romanovich and that the latter was witnessed by several people. However, Trepashkin was unable to bring the evidence to court, because he was arrested by FSB in October 2003 (imprisoned in Nizhny Tagil
), allegedly for "disclosing state secrets", just a few days before he was to make his findings public. He was sentenced by a military closed court
to four years imprisonment. Amnesty International
issued a statement 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". Romanovich subsequently died in a hit and run
accident in Cyprus
. According to Trepashkin, his supervisors and people from the FSB promised not to arrest him if he left the Kovalev commission and started working with the FSB "against Alexander Litvinenko". Commission chairman Kovalev summarized their findings as follows: "What can I tell? We can prove only one thing: there was no training exercise in the city of Ryazan. Authorities do not want to answer any questions..."
On 10 December 2006 Trepashkin wrote a letter to newspaper Novaya Gazeta
where he claimed that the officials of the Regional Directorate against the Organized Crimes (RUOP) of Main Directorate of the Internal Affairs (GUVD) in Moscow arrested several people who were questioned in regards of buying and selling RDX
. Soon after the arrest several officials from the N.P.Petrushev Directorate of FSB came to the headquarters of the GUVD on Shabolovka Street
, took all of the material evidences, and ordered to fire all the officials that conducted the arrest. Later sometime in 2000 Trepashkin had meetings with several of the high-ranking officers from the RUOP that disclosed him the whole story. They offered the videocassette containing the footage that led to the arrest of the RDX dealers and offered to appear in court as witnesses. Trepashkin never publicized that to the Public Commission of the State Duma headed by Kovalev to avoid further involvement of the state security services. A similar videocassette possessed Aleksandr Litvinenko with whom Trepashkin contacted as well. Soon thereafter Trepashkin was arrested as a bandit and thrown in a car under a Chechen handgun loaded with seven bullets of the FSB officials which were accusing him in a plot against the President of the Russian Federation and was taken to the city of Dmitrov
. The whole court process in regards to the bombings took place without him and behind the closed doors to avoid the information leak. Trepashkin was surprised how the officials of FSB found out about his investigations and became suspicious of couple of journalists with whom he conducted his investigations Levitov (survivability of whom he doubted) and V.V.Shebalin. Trepashkin later found that the latter disclosed everything to D.A.Paramonov, the member of FSB.
Soon the controversial Litvinenko affair took place also. In January 2002 after the Shebalin's statement FSB confiscated the Trepashkin's PC where he had the last evidences of his investigations. After the FSB was not able to open the encrypted evidences in Trepashkin's computer they illegally destroyed it.
On 2 September, Al-Khattab announced: "The mujahideen of Dagestan are going to carry out reprisals in various places across Russia.", but Khattab would later on 14 September deny responsibility in the blasts, adding that he is fighting the Russian army, not women and children.
On 9 September, an anonymous person, speaking with a Caucasian
accent, phoned the Interfax news agency, saying that the blasts in Moscow and Buynaksk were "our response to the bombings of civilians in the villages in Chechnya and Dagestan." In an interview to the Czech newspaper Lidove Noviny
on 9 September, Shamil Basayev denied responsibility, saying: "The latest blast in Moscow is not our work, but the work of the Dagestanis. Russia has been openly terrorizing Dagestan, it encircled three villages in the centre of Dagestan, did not allow women and children to leave." A few days later Basayev denied that Islamist fighters were responsible for the blasts, and instead were connected to "Russian domestic politics." In a later interview, Basayev said he had no idea who was behind the bombings. "Dagestani’s could have done it, or the Russian special services."
From 9 September to 13 September, AP reporter Greg Myre conducted an interview with Ibn Al-Khattab
, in which Al-Khattab as said, "From now on, we will not only fight against Russian fighter jets and tanks. From now on, they will get our bombs everywhere. Let Russia await our explosions blasting through their cities. I swear we will do it." The interview was published on 15 September. In a subsequent interview with Interfax, al-Khattab denied involvement in the bombings, saying "We would not like to be akin to those who kill sleeping civilians with bombs and shells."
On 15 September, an unidentified man, again speaking with a Caucasian accent, called the ITAR-TASS news agency, claiming to represent a group called the Liberation Army of Dagestan
. He said that the explosions in Buynaksk and Moscow were carried out by his organization. According to him, the attacks were a retaliation to the deaths of Muslim women and children during Russian air raids in Dagestan. "We will answer death with death," the caller said. Russian officials from both the Interior Ministry and FSB, at the time, expressed skepticism over the claims. Sergei Bogdanov, of the FSB press service in Moscow, said that the words of a previously unknown individual representing a semi-mythical organization should not be considered as reliable. Mr. Bogdanov insisted that the organization had nothing to do with the bombing. On 15 September 1999 a Dagestani official also denied the existence of a "Dagestan Liberation Army".
that one of options considered by the Kremlin leaders was "a series of terror bombings in Moscow that could be blamed on the Chechens." Satter also noted that on 22 July, the Moscow newspaper Moskovskaya Pravda published leaked documents about an operation, "Storm in Moscow", which, by organizing terrorist acts to cause chaos, would bring about a state of emergency, thus saving the Yeltsin regime.
Duma member Konstantin Borovoi said that he had been "warned by an agent of Russian military intelligence of a wave of terrorist bombings" prior to the blasts.
and Abu Omar al-Saif
, Arab militants fighting in Chechnya on the side of Chechen insurgents. Both Russia and USA accuse Al-Khattab of having direct links with Al-Qaida, though Khattab himself has always denied this. Al-Khattab and al-Saif 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
, according to the prosecution. Gochiyaev's group was trained at Chechen rebel bases in the towns of Serzhen-Yurt and Urus-Martan. The group's "technical instructors" were two Arab field commanders, Abu Umar and Abu Djafar, Al-Khattab was the bombings' brainchild. The explosives were prepared at a fertilizer factory in Urus-Martan
Chechnya, by "mixing aluminium powder, nitre and sugar in a concrete mixer", or by also putting their RDX and TNT. 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, 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.
, and Borisovskiye Prudy, and then helped to hide Gochiyayev and his accomplices in Chechnya. In early September, 1999, Magayayev, Krymshamkhalov, Batchayev and Dekkushev reloaded the cargo into a Mercedes-Benz 2236 trailer and delivered it to Moscow. En route, they were protected from possible complications by an accomplice, Khakim Abayev, who accompanied the trailer in another car. In Moscow they were met by Achemez Gochiyayev, who registered in Hotel Altai under the fake name "Laipanov", and Denis Saitakov. The explosives were left in a warehouse
in Ulitsa Krasnodonskaya, which was leased by pseudo-Laipanov (Gochiyayev.) The next day, the explosives were delivered in "ZIL-5301" vans to three addresses – Ulitsa Guryanova, Kashirskoye Shosse and Ulitsa Borisovskiye Prudy, where pseudo-Laipanov leased cellars. Gochiyayev supervised the placement of the bombs in the rented cellars. Next followed the explosions at the former two addresses. The explosion at 16 Borisovskiye Prudy was prevented. 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 know Gochiyaev". They said that someone "who posed as a jihad leader had duped them into the operation" by hiring them to transport his explosives, and they later realized this man was working for the FSB. They claimed that bombings were directed by German Ugryumov
who supervised the FSB Alpha
and Vympel
special forces units at that time.
, and randomly picked the apartment building on Octyabrskoye Shosse to blow up. Abu Omar
had promised to pay him for the job, but Dekkushev never got a single kopeck. According to Dekkushev, it wasn't the FSB that ordered the bombing, as Boris Berezovsky later claimed, but the United States Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA).
, the head of the group that carried out the attacks and allegedly the main organizer, remains a fugitive, and is under an international search warrant. In a statement released in January, 2004, the FSB said, "until we arrest Gochiyayev, the investigation of the apartment bloc bombings of 1999 will not be finished."
rejected two motions for parliamentary investigation of the Ryazan incident.
An independent public commission to investigate the bombings, which was chaired by Duma deputy Sergei Kovalev
, was rendered ineffective because of government refusal to respond to its inquiries.
In a 2002 interview to Echo Moskvy Mr. Kovalev commented on the Ryazan incident:
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. Another member of the commission, Otto Lacis
, was assaulted in November 2003 and two years later, on 3 November 2005, he died in a hospital after a car accident.
The commission asked lawyer Mikhail Trepashkin
to investigate the case. Mr. Trepashkin claimed to have found that the basement of one of the bombed buildings was rented by FSB officer Vladimir Romanovich and that the latter was witnessed by several people. Mr. Trepashkin was unable to bring the alleged evidence to the court because he was arrested in October 2003 for illegal arms possession, just a few days shortly before he was to make his findings public. He was sentenced by a Moscow military court to four years imprisonment for disclosing state secrets. Amnesty International
issued a statement 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". Romanovich subsequently died in a hit and run
accident in Cyprus
.
However, in 2009 Russian Novaya Gazeta
newspaper published a note, which stated that Romanovich died more than a year before the apartment bombings took place:
Mr. Trepashkin investigated a letter attributed to Achemez Gochiyayev and found that the alleged assistant of Gochiyayev who arranged the delivery of sacks might have been Kapstroi-2000 vice-president Kormishin, a resident of Vyazma
.
According to Mr. Trepashkin, his supervisors and the people from the FSB promised not to arrest him if he left the Kovalev commission and started working together with the FSB "against Alexander Litvinenko".
On 24 March 2000, two days before the presidential elections
, NTV Russia
featured the Ryazan events of Fall 1999 in the talk show Independent Investigation. The talk with the residents of the Ryazan apartment building along with FSB public relations director Alexander Zdanovich and Ryazan branch head Alexander Sergeyev was filmed few days earlier. On 26 March Boris Nemtsov
voiced his concern over the possible shut-down of NTV for airing the talk. Seven months later NTV general manager Igor Malashenko said at the JFK School of Government
that Information Minister Mikhail Lesin
warned him on several occasions. Mr. Malashenko's recollection of Mr. Lesin's warning was that by airing the talk show NTV "crossed the line" and that the NTV managers were "outlaws" in the eyes of the Kremlin. According to Alexander Goldfarb, Mr. Malashenko told him that Valentin Yumashev
brought a warning from the Kremlin, one day before airing the show, promising in no uncertain terms that the NTV managers "should consider themselves finished" if they went ahead with the broadcast.
Artyom Borovik
told Grigory Yavlinsky that Borovik investigated the Moscow apartment bombings and prepared a series of publications about them. Mr. Borovik received numerous death threats, and he died in an airplane crash in March 2000.
Journalist Anna Politkovskaya
and former security service member Alexander Litvinenko
, who investigated the bombings, were killed in 2006.
Surviving victims of the Guryanova street bombing asked President Dmitry Medvedev
to resume the investigation in 2008.
, David Satter
, Boris Kagarlitsky, Vladimir Pribylovsky
, the secessionist Chechen authorities claimed that the 1999 bombings were a false flag
attack coordinated by the FSB in order to win public support for a new full-scale war in Chechnya, which boosted Prime Minister and former FSB Director Vladimir Putin
's popularity, and brought the pro-war Unity Party
to the State Duma
and Putin to the presidency within a few months.
According to the theory, the bombings were a successful coup d'état
organized by the FSB to bring future Russian president Vladimir Putin to power. Some of them described the bombings as typical "active measures
" practiced by the KGB
in the past. David Satter stated, during his testimony in the United States House of Representatives
,
In a 2002 interview to Echo Moskvy Sergei Kovalev referred to the theory of Felshtinsky and Pribylovsky as a "pure conspiracy", albeit stating that every theory should be checked.
Helen Womack from The Independent quoted Alexei Kartofelnikov's daughter Yulia, police officer Major Vladimir Golev, Lt. Col. of the Ryazan police Sergei Kabashov.
John Sweeney
a journalist at Observer, later for BBC, quoted Vladimir Vasiliev, one of the 2 Ryazan apartment residents who tipped militsia, an "inspector" "from the local police" Andrei Chernyshev, "grandmother Clara Stepanovna", "head of the local bomb squad" Yuri Tkachenko, head of the regional FSB Alexander Sergeyev and others.
and presidential candidate John McCain
said that there remained "credible allegations that Russia's FSB had a hand in carrying out these [Moscow apartment bombing] attacks".
Paul Khlebnikov wrote that former Security Council chief Alexandr Lebed in his 17 February 1997 interview with Le Figaro
was almost convinced that the government organized the terrorist attacks against its own citizens.
According to Johann Hari
, "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".
A famous American author in military strategy J.R. Nyquist suggested that Russian secret military operation should also be considered.
In 2000, Russia's President Vladimir Putin dismissed the allegations of FSB involvement in the bombings as "delirious nonsense." "There are no people in the Russian secret services who would be capable of such crime against their own people. The very allegation is immoral," he said. An FSB spokesman said that "Litvinenko's evidence cannot be taken seriously by those who are investigating the bombings".
Sergei Markov, an advisor to the Russian government, criticized the film Assassination of Russia which supported the FSB involvement theory. Markov said that the film was "a well-made professional example of the propagandist and psychological war that Boris Berezovsky is notoriously good at." Markov found parallels between the film and the conspiracy theory
that the United States and/or Israel
organized the 9/11 attacks to justify military actions.
According to researcher Gordon Bennett, the conspiracy theory that the FSB was behind the bombings is kept alive by the Russian oligarch and Kremlin-critic Boris Berezovsky. Bennett points out that neither Berezovsky nor his team (which includes Alexander Litvinenko) have provided any evidence to support their claims. In the BBC World
Hard Talk interview on 8 May 2002, Berezovsky was also unable to present any evidence for his claims, and he did not suggest he was in possession of such evidence which he would be ready to present in a court. Bennett also points out that Putin's critics often forget that the decision to send troops to Chechnya was taken by Boris Yeltsin — not Vladimir Putin — with the wholehearted support of all power structures.
Professor Richard Sakwa
has commented on the claims of Berezovsky and Litvinenko, saying that the evidence they presented was at best circumstantial.
Dr. Mike Bowker, from the University of East Anglia
, has said that the inference that the bombings were carried out by the Russian authorities is uncorroborated by evidence. According to Bowker, the theory also ignores the history of Chechen terrorism and public threats by various Chechen rebels following their defeat in Dagestan – which included Khattab telling a Czech and a German newspaper, a few days before the bombings in Moscow, that "Russian women and children will pay for the crimes of Russian generals." and that "this will not happen tomorrow, but the day after tomorrow"
Dr. Vlad Sobell has pointed out that the proponents of the theory that the second invasion of Chechnya was a plot by Putin to get elected regularly ignore the key fact that Putin's attack on Chechnya in 1999 was preceded by a Chechen insurrection in Dagestan, whose objective was to turn it into another unstable Chechnya.
According to Associate Professor Henry E. Hale of Harvard University
, one thing that remains unclear about the "FSB did it" theory: If the motive was to get an FSB-friendly man installed as president, why would the FSB have preferred Putin, a little-known "upstart" who had leapt to the post of FSB director through outside political channels, to Primakov, who was certainly senior in stature and pedigree and who was also widely reputed to have a KGB past?
According to Dr. Robert Bruce Ware
of Southern Illinois University
, "The assertions that Russian security services are responsible for the bombings is at least partially incorrect, and appears to have given rise to an obscurantist mythology of Russian culpability. At the very least, it is clear that these assertions are incomplete in so far as they have not taken full account of the evidence suggesting the responsibility of Wahhabis under the leadership of Khattab, who may have been seeking retribution for the federal assault upon Dagestan's Islamic Djamaat."
Dr. Kirill Pankratov, in a 2003 letter to the Johnson's Russia List
, spoke against Satter's and Putley's theory. He noted that 1) there was no need for "another pretext for military operation in Chechnya at the time of the Ryazan incident", but there were already a "plenty of reasons for decisive military response", 2) the FSB of other security service was institutionally incapable of such a conspiracy after years of decline in the 1990s, 3) the conspirators were not actually trying to blow a building up in Ryazan; however, their sloppy actions are "consistent with the training exercise version of events", 4) the FSB did not have to declare the incident a "training exercise", but "it was much easier to show great relief... and continue trying to find the perpetrators of the bombing attempt."
Security and policy analysts Simon Saradzhyan
and Nabi Abdullaev noted that Litvinenko and Felshtinsky did not provide any direct evidence to back up their claims about FSB involvement in the bombings.
Andrey Soldatov is skeptical about Mikhail Trepashkin
's awareness of the details of the Russian apartment bombings. According to Soldatov, the Russian government's suppression of the discussion of the FSB involvement theory reflects paranoia rather than guilt on its part. He points out that, ironically, the paranoia produced the conspiracy theories that the government was keen to stamp out.
In 2009, Russian journalist and radio host Yulia Latynina
, commenting on Scott Anderson
's article "Vladimir Putin's Dark Rise to Power" noted that deaths of Sergey Yushenkov and Yury Schekochihin "in any case, had no relation to bombings in Moscow". Latynina opined, that the version that FSB did the bombings was not only absurd, but purposefully invented by Berezovsky after he was deprived of the power. Her major argument was, that since Berezovsky was one of the key figures to push Putin into the power, he knew for certain the theory was wrong. If Berezovsky felt that "there are some people else beyond Putin, some fearsome siloviks who can explode houses, they [the Family] would throw Putin away, as a hot potato".
, which claimed responsibility for the attacks, is the same as Al-Khattab's Islamic Army of Dagestan, which launched the invasion of Dagestan from Chechnya in August, 1999".
Professor Peter Reddaway and researcher Dmitri Glinski described the involvement of the Liberation Army of Dagestan
as the best explanation for the bombings.
According to Dr. Robert Bruce Ware
, an associate professor of Southern Illinois University
, the best explanation for the apartment block blasts is that they were perpetrated by Wahhabis under the leadership of Khattab, as retribution for the federal attacks on Karamachi, Chabanmakhi, and Kadar. "If the blasts were organized by Khattab and other Wahhabis as retribution for the federal attacks on Dagestan's Islamic Djamaat, then this would explain the timing of the attacks, and why there were no attacks after the date on which fighting in Dagestan was concluded. It would explain why no Chechen claimed responsibility. It would account for Basayev's reference to Dagestani responsibility, and it would be consistent with Khattab's vow to set off bombs everywhere... blasting through [Russian] cities."
In March 2010 article Yulia Latynina wrote:
To be completed...
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n cities of Buynaksk
Buynaksk
Buynaksk is a town in the Republic of Dagestan, Russia, located at the foothills of the Greater Caucasus on the Shura-Ozen River, southwest of the republic's capital Makhachkala. Population: 40,000 ....
, Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, and Volgodonsk
Volgodonsk
Volgodonsk is a city in Rostov Oblast, Russia, located in the eastern part of the oblast on the west bank of the Tsimlyansk Reservoir. Population: 28,000 .-History:...
in September 1999, killing 293 people and injuring 651. The explosions occurred in Buynaksk on 4 September, Moscow on 9 and 13 September, and Volgodonsk on 16 September. Several other bombs were defused in Moscow at the time.
A similar bomb was found and defused in the Russian city of Ryazan
Ryazan
Ryazan is a city and the administrative center of Ryazan Oblast, Russia. It is located on the Oka River southeast of Moscow. Population: The strategic bomber base Dyagilevo is just west of the city, and the air base of Alexandrovo is to the southeast as is the Ryazan Turlatovo Airport...
on 23 September 1999. On the next day Federal Security Service Director Nikolai Patrushev announced that the Ryazan incident had been a training exercise.
Together with the Invasion of Dagestan launched from Chechnya in August 1999 by Islamist
Islamism
Islamism also , lit., "Political Islam" is set of ideologies holding that Islam is not only a religion but also a political system. Islamism is a controversial term, and definitions of it sometimes vary...
militia led by Shamil Basayev
Shamil Basayev
Shamil Salmanovich Basayev was a Chechen militant Islamist and a leader of the Chechen rebel movement.Starting as a field commander in the Transcaucasus, Basayev led guerrilla campaigns against the Russian troops for years, as well as launching mass-hostage takings of civilians, with his goal...
and Ibn al-Khattab
Ibn al-Khattab
Samir Saleh Abdullah Al-Suwailem , more commonly known as Emir Khattab meaning Commander Khattab, or Leader Khattab, and also known as Habib Abdul Rahman, was a Muslim guerilla fighter and financier working with Chechen Mujahideen in the First Chechen War...
, the bombings caused the Russian Federation to launch the Second Chechen War
Second Chechen War
The Second Chechen War, in a later phase better known as the War in the North Caucasus, was launched by the Russian Federation starting 26 August 1999, in response to the Invasion of Dagestan by the Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigade ....
.
Although on 2 September 1999, the militia commander Ibn Al-Khattab
Ibn al-Khattab
Samir Saleh Abdullah Al-Suwailem , more commonly known as Emir Khattab meaning Commander Khattab, or Leader Khattab, and also known as Habib Abdul Rahman, was a Muslim guerilla fighter and financier working with Chechen Mujahideen in the First Chechen War...
announced that "The mujahideen of Dagestan are going to carry out reprisals in various places across Russia," on 14 September he denied responsibility for the blasts, adding that he was fighting the Russian army, not women and children.
An official investigation of the bombings was completed by the Russian Federal Security Service in 2002. According to the investigation and the court ruling that followed, the bombings were organized by Achemez Gochiyaev
Achemez Gochiyaev
Achemez Gochiyayev is a Russian citizen who was accused of organizing Russian apartment bombings, a series of terrorist acts in 1999 that killed nearly 300 people and led the country into the Second Chechen War...
, who remained at large as of 2010, and ordered by Ibn Al-Khattab and Abu Omar al-Saif
Abu Omar al-Saif
Abu Omar al-Saif was an informal name or nom de guerre of a Saudi Islamist and fighter operating first in Afghanistan and later in the North Caucasus as the mufti of Arab fighters in Chechnya, allegedly with close ties to al-Qaeda. His full name was Muhammad bin Abdullah bin Saif al-Tamimi...
, who were later killed. Six other suspects have been convicted by Russian courts.
State Duma member Yuri Shchekochikhin
Yuri Shchekochikhin
Yuri Petrovich Shchekochikhin was a Russian investigative journalist, writer, and liberal lawmaker of Russian parliament. Shchekochikhin made his name writing about and campaigning against the influence of organized crime and corruption...
filed two motions for a parliamentary investigation of the events, but the motions were rejected by the Duma in March 2000. An independent public commission to investigate the bombings was chaired by Duma deputy Sergei Kovalev
Sergei Kovalev
Sergei Kovalev is a Russian human rights activist and politician and a former Soviet dissident and political prisoner.- Early career and arrest :...
. The commission was rendered ineffective because of government refusal to respond to its inquiries. The Commission's lawyer Mikhail Trepashkin
Mikhail Trepashkin
Mikhail Ivanovich Trepashkin, is a Moscow attorney and former FSB colonel who was invited by MP Sergei Kovalev to assist in an independent inquiry of the Russian apartment bombings in September 1999 – the atrocities that followed Dagestan war and were one of the triggers for the Second Chechen...
was arrested for exposing classified information.
Yury Felshtinsky (resides in the USA), Alexander Litvinenko
Alexander Litvinenko
Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko was an officer who served in the Soviet KGB and its Russian successor, the Federal Security Service ....
(assassinated in 2006), Boris Berezovsky (oligarch in British exile), David Satter
David Satter
David Satter is a former Moscow correspondent and expert on Russia and the Soviet Union who wrote books about the decline and fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of post-Soviet Russia.-Life and career:...
, Boris Kagarlitsky, Vladimir Pribylovsky
Vladimir Pribylovsky
Vladimir Valerianovich Pribylovsky is a Russian historian, journalist and human rights advocate opposed to current Russian authorities.-Biography:...
, the secessionist Chechen authorities claimed that the 1999 bombings were a false flag
False flag
False flag operations are covert operations designed to deceive the public in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by other entities. The name is derived from the military concept of flying false colors; that is flying the flag of a country other than one's own...
attack coordinated by the FSB in order to win public support for a new full-scale war in Chechnya, which boosted Prime Minister and former FSB Director Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin served as the second President of the Russian Federation and is the current Prime Minister of Russia, as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when...
's popularity, and brought the pro-war Unity Party
Unity (political party)
Unity was a Russian political party that was created in September 1999 and registered on October 15, supported by Russia’s President Boris Yeltsin, PM Vladimir Putin and dozens of Russian governors to counter the threat which the Kremlin perceived from the Fatherland-All Russia alliance...
to the State Duma
State Duma
The State Duma , common abbreviation: Госду́ма ) in the Russian Federation is the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia , the upper house being the Federation Council of Russia. The Duma headquarters is located in central Moscow, a few steps from Manege Square. Its members are referred to...
and Putin to the presidency within a few months.
Gordon Bennett from Conflict Studies Research Centre
Conflict Studies Research Centre
The Conflict Studies Research Centre, or CSRC, was a component of the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, based at Shrivenham. It specialised in potential causes of conflict in a wide area ranging from the Baltics to Central Asia....
, Robert Bruce Ware
Robert Bruce Ware
Robert Bruce Ware is Professor of Philosophy at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. He is the author of Hegel: The Logic of Self-consciousness and the Legacy of Subjective Freedom...
, Paul J. Murphy, Henry Plater-Zyberk
Henry Plater-Zyberk
Henry Plater-Zyberk is senior analyst of the Conflict Studies Research Centre at the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, Sovietologist and a specialist in Russia and Central Asia. He has also served as an analyst of the British Foreign Office...
, Simon Saradzhyan
Simon Saradzhyan
Simon Saradzhyan is a research fellow at Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. Saradzhyan has previously worked as deputy editor of Moscow Times and has contributed articles for many other publications as well, such The Times, the Sunday Telegraph, Defense News,...
, Nabi Abdullaev and Richard Sakwa
Richard Sakwa
Richard Sakwa is an expert in the field of Russian and Eastern European communist and post-communist politics. Sakwa is Professor of Russian and European politics at the University of Kent.-Career:...
criticized the conspiracy theory, pointing out problems such as the lack of evidence.
Previous threats and bombings
A bomb detonated in a crowded market1999 Vladikavkaz bombing
The 1999 Vladikavkaz bombing took place in a crowded market in Vladikavkaz, North Ossetia-Alania, Russia on March 19, 1999 killing 62 and injuring many.The bombers were tried and convicted on December 15, 2003...
in Vladikavkaz, North Ossetia-Alania on March 19, 1999 killing 62 and injuring many.
A Finnish journalist who in mid-August 1999, before the bombings, travelled to the village of Karamakhi
Karamakhi
Karamakhi is a rural locality in Buynaksky District of the Republic of Dagestan, Russia.-Overview:In 1997-1999, Karamakhi became a hotbed of radical islamism...
in Dagestan
Dagestan
The Republic of Dagestan is a federal subject of Russia, located in the North Caucasus region. Its capital and the largest city is Makhachkala, located at the center of Dagestan on the Caspian Sea...
, interviewed some villagers and their military Commander General Dzherollak. The journalist wrote: "The Wahhabis' trucks go all over Russia. Even one wrong move in Moscow or Makhachkala, they warn, will lead to bombs and bloodshed everywhere." According to the journalist the Wahhabis had told him, "if they start bombing us, we know where our bombs will explode." In the last days of August, Russian military launched an aerial bombing of the villages.
Further bombings
On 29 March 2010, two suicide bombers blew themselves up on the Moscow Metro2010 Moscow Metro bombings
The 2010 Moscow Metro bombings were suicide bombings carried out by two womenduring the morning rush hour of March 29, 2010, at two stations of the Moscow Metro , with roughly 40 minutes interval between...
, killing 38 people. It was conjectured that the group responsible for the Russian apartment bombings might also have had links to the Moscow Metro bombings.
Overview
Five apartment bombings took place and at least three attempted bombings were prevented. All bombing had the same "signature", judging from the nature and the volume of the destruction. In each case the explosive RDXRDX
RDX, an initialism for Research Department Explosive, is an explosive nitroamine widely used in military and industrial applications. It was developed as an explosive which was more powerful than TNT, and it saw wide use in WWII. RDX is also known as cyclonite, hexogen , and T4...
was used, and the timers were set to go off at night and inflict the maximum number of civilian casualties. The explosives were placed to destroy the weakest, most critical elements of the buildings and force the buildings to "collapse like a house of cards". The terrorists were able to obtain or manufacture several tons of powerful explosives and deliver them to numerous destinations across Russia
Moscow mall
On 31 August 1999, at 20:00 local time (8:00 PM), a powerful explosion took place in a busy Moscow shopping center. One person was killed and 40 others injured. According to FSB, the explosion had been caused by a bomb of about 300g of explosives.Buynaksk, Dagestan
On 4 September 1999, at 22:00 (18:00 GMT), a car bombCar bomb
A car bomb, or truck bomb also known as a Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device , is an improvised explosive device placed in a car or other vehicle and then detonated. It is commonly used as a weapon of assassination, terrorism, or guerrilla warfare, to kill the occupants of the vehicle,...
detonated outside a five story apartment building in the city of Buynaksk
Buynaksk
Buynaksk is a town in the Republic of Dagestan, Russia, located at the foothills of the Greater Caucasus on the Shura-Ozen River, southwest of the republic's capital Makhachkala. Population: 40,000 ....
in Dagestan
Dagestan
The Republic of Dagestan is a federal subject of Russia, located in the North Caucasus region. Its capital and the largest city is Makhachkala, located at the center of Dagestan on the Caspian Sea...
, near the border of Chechnya. The building was housing Russian border guard
Border guard
The border guard, frontier guard, border patrol, border police, or frontier police of a country is a national security agency that performs border control, i.e., enforces the security of the country's national borders....
soldiers and their families. 64 people were killed and 133 were injured in the explosion. Another car bomb was found and defused in the same town. The defused bomb was in a car containing 2,706 kilograms of explosives. It was discovered by local residents in a parking lot surrounded by an army hospital and residential buildings.
Moscow, Pechatniki
On 9 September 1999, shortly after midnight local time, at 20:00 GMT, 300 to 400 kg of explosives detonated on the ground floor of an apartment building in south-east Moscow (19 Guryanova Street). The nine-story building was destroyed, killing 94 people inside and injuring 249 others. 15 nearby buildings were also damaged. A total of 108 apartments were destroyed during the bombing. An FSB spokesman identified the explosive as RDXRDX
RDX, an initialism for Research Department Explosive, is an explosive nitroamine widely used in military and industrial applications. It was developed as an explosive which was more powerful than TNT, and it saw wide use in WWII. RDX is also known as cyclonite, hexogen , and T4...
. Residents said a few minutes before the blast four men were seen speeding away from the building in a car.
The President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin
Boris Yeltsin
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was the first President of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999.Originally a supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev, Yeltsin emerged under the perestroika reforms as one of Gorbachev's most powerful political opponents. On 29 May 1990 he was elected the chairman of...
ordered the search of 30,000 residential buildings in Moscow for explosives. He took personal control of the investigation of the blast. Vladimir Putin declared 13 September a day of mourning for the victims of the attacks.
Moscow, Kashirskoye highway
On 13 September 1999, at 5:00 a.m., a large bomb exploded in a basement of an apartment block on Kashirskoye Highway in southern Moscow, about 6 km from the place of the last attack. 119 people died and 200 were injured. This was the deadliest blast in the chain of bombings. The eight-story building was flattened, littering the street with debris and throwing some concrete pieces hundreds of yards away.Moscow, attempted bombings
According to FSB public relations director Alexander Zdanovich and Oksana Yablokova of The Moscow TimesThe Moscow Times
The Moscow Times is an English-language daily newspaper published in Moscow, Russia since 1992. The circulation in 2008 stood at 35,000 copies and the newspaper is typically given out for free at places English-language "expats" attend, including hotels, cafés and restaurants, as well as by...
, official investigators defused explosives on Borisovskiye Prudy street in Moscow 14 September 1999. Yuri Felshtinsky and Alexander Litvinenko added a site in the Liublino district and another in Kapotnya to the list of caches. Satter wrote that three attempted bombings were prevented.
According to the messages received by Yuri Felshtinsky and by Prima News agency from someone claiming to be Achemez Gochiyaev
Achemez Gochiyaev
Achemez Gochiyayev is a Russian citizen who was accused of organizing Russian apartment bombings, a series of terrorist acts in 1999 that killed nearly 300 people and led the country into the Second Chechen War...
, on 13 September 1999 a bomb was defused in a building in the Kapotnya area. A warehouse containing several tons of explosives and six timing devices was found at Borisovskiye Prudy. The author of the messages wrote that he called the police and warned about the bombing locations, which helped to prevent a large number of further casualties. Gochiyaev or his impersonators claimed that he was framed by his old acquaintance, an FSB officer who asked him to rent basements "as storage facilities" at four locations where bombs were later found.
Volgodonsk
A truck bomb exploded on 16 September 1999, outside a nine-story apartment complex in the southern Russian city of VolgodonskVolgodonsk
Volgodonsk is a city in Rostov Oblast, Russia, located in the eastern part of the oblast on the west bank of the Tsimlyansk Reservoir. Population: 28,000 .-History:...
, killing 17 people and injuring 69. The bombing took place at 5:57 am. Surrounding buildings were also damaged. The blast also happened nine miles from a nuclear power plant. Prime Minister Putin signed a decree calling on law enforcement and other agencies to develop plans within three days to protect industry, transportation, communications, food processing centers and nuclear complexes.
Ryazan incident
At 8:30 P.M. on 22 September, 1999, a resident of an apartment building in the city of RyazanRyazan
Ryazan is a city and the administrative center of Ryazan Oblast, Russia. It is located on the Oka River southeast of Moscow. Population: The strategic bomber base Dyagilevo is just west of the city, and the air base of Alexandrovo is to the southeast as is the Ryazan Turlatovo Airport...
noticed two suspicious men who carried sacks into the basement from a car with a Moscow license plate.
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
, 27 January 2000
John Sweeney
John Sweeney may refer to:*John E. Sweeney , U.S. Representative from New York*John Roland Sweeney , Canadian, politician and educator*John Sweeney , BBC journalist*John James Sweeney, Pennsylvania politician...
, Cryptome
Cryptome
Cryptome is a website hosted in the United States since 1996 by independent scholars and architects John Young and Deborah Natsios that functions as a repository for information about freedom of speech, cryptography, spying, and surveillance...
, 24 November 2000 He alerted the police, but by the time they arrived the car and the men were gone. The policemen found three 50 kg sacks of white powder in the basement. A detonator
Detonator
A detonator is a device used to trigger an explosive device. Detonators can be chemically, mechanically, or electrically initiated, the latter two being the most common....
and a timing device
Timer
A timer is a specialized type of clock. A timer can be used to control the sequence of an event or process. Whereas a stopwatch counts upwards from zero for measuring elapsed time, a timer counts down from a specified time interval, like an hourglass.Timers can be mechanical, electromechanical,...
were attached and armed. The timer was set to 5:30 AM. Yuri Tkachenko, the head of the local bomb squad
Bomb disposal
Bomb disposal is the process by which hazardous explosive devices are rendered safe. Bomb disposal is an all encompassing term to describe the separate, but interrelated functions in the following fields:*Military:...
, disconnected the detonator and the timer and tested the three sacks of white substance with a "MO-2" gas analyzer
Mass spectrometry
Mass spectrometry is an analytical technique that measures the mass-to-charge ratio of charged particles.It is used for determining masses of particles, for determining the elemental composition of a sample or molecule, and for elucidating the chemical structures of molecules, such as peptides and...
. The device detected traces of RDX
RDX
RDX, an initialism for Research Department Explosive, is an explosive nitroamine widely used in military and industrial applications. It was developed as an explosive which was more powerful than TNT, and it saw wide use in WWII. RDX is also known as cyclonite, hexogen , and T4...
, the military explosive used in all previous bombings. Police and rescue vehicles converged from different parts of the city, and 30,000 residents were evacuated from the area. 1,200 local police officers armed with automatic weapons set up roadblock
Roadblock
A roadblock is a temporary installation set up to control or block traffic along a road. The reasons for one could be:*Roadworks*Temporary road closure during special events*Police chase*Robbery*Sobriety checkpoint...
s on highways around the city and started patrolling railroad stations and airports to hunt the terrorists down.
At 1:30 A.M. on 23 September, the explosive engineers took a bit of substance from the suspicious-looking sacks to a firing ground located some kilometers away from Ryazan for testing. During the substance tests at that area they tried to explode it by means of a detonator, but their efforts failed, the substance was not detonated, and the explosion did not occur. At 5 A.M. Radio Rossiya reported about the attempted bombing noting that the bomb was set up to go off at 5:30 A.M. In the morning, "Ryazan resembled a city under siege". Composite sketches of three suspected terrorists, two men and a woman, were posted everywhere in the city and shown on TV. At 8:00 A.M. Russian television reported the attempt to blow out the building in Ryzan and identified the explosive used in the bomb as RDX
RDX
RDX, an initialism for Research Department Explosive, is an explosive nitroamine widely used in military and industrial applications. It was developed as an explosive which was more powerful than TNT, and it saw wide use in WWII. RDX is also known as cyclonite, hexogen , and T4...
. Vladimir Rushailo
Vladimir Rushailo
Vladimir Borisovich Rushailo is a Russian politician.From 1999 to 2001, he was the Interior Minister of Russia, and Secretary of Security Council from 2001 to 2004. As the Minister of the Interior, he was charged with overseeing the security of sensitive internal sites and materials such as...
announced later that police prevented a terrorist act. A news block at 4 p.m. reported that the explosives failed to detonate during their testing outside the city
At 7 P.M. Prime Minister of Russia
Prime Minister of Russia
The Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation The use of the term "Prime Minister" is strictly informal and is not allowed for by the Russian Constitution and other laws....
Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin served as the second President of the Russian Federation and is the current Prime Minister of Russia, as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when...
praised the vigilance of the Ryazanians and called for the air bombing of the Chechen capital Grozny
Grozny
Grozny is the capital city of the Chechen Republic, Russia. The city lies on the Sunzha River. According to the preliminary results of the 2010 Census, the city had a population of 271,596; up from 210,720 recorded in the 2002 Census. but still only about two-thirds of 399,688 recorded in the 1989...
in response to the terrorism acts. He said:
Later, the same evening, a telephone service employee in Ryazan tapped into long distance phone conversations and managed to detect a talk in which an out-of-town person suggested to others that they "split up" and "make your own way out". That person's number was traced to a telephone exchange unit
Telephone exchange
In the field of telecommunications, a telephone exchange or telephone switch is a system of electronic components that connects telephone calls...
serving FSB offices. When arrested, the detainees produced FSB identification cards. They were soon released on orders from Moscow.
On 24 September, FSB director Nikolai Patrushev announced that the exercise was carried out to test responses after the earlier blasts. The Ryazan FSB "reacted with fury" and issued a statement saying:
FSB issued a public apology about the incident.
Official explanation of the Ryazan incident
The Russia's General Prosecutor's Office, answering a parliamentary inquiry about apartment bombings in 2002 reported thatExplosives in Ryazan
The Russian Deputy Prosecutor declared in 2002 that a comprehensive testing of the samples showed no traces of any explosives, and that sacks from Ryazan contained only sugarSugar
Sugar is a class of edible crystalline carbohydrates, mainly sucrose, lactose, and fructose, characterized by a sweet flavor.Sucrose in its refined form primarily comes from sugar cane and sugar beet...
. However Yuri Tkachenko, the police explosives expert who defused the Ryazan bomb, insisted that it was real. Tkachenko said that the explosives, including a timer, a power source, and a 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 RDX. Tkachenko said that it was out of the question that the analyzer could have malfunctioned, as the gas analyzer was of world class quality, cost $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 experts depended on the reliability of their equipment. The police officers who answered the original call and discovered the bomb also insisted that it was obvious from its appearance that the substance in the bomb was not sugar.
At a press conference on the occasion of the Federal Security Service Employee Day in December 2001 Yury Tkachenko, the police explosives expert who defused the Ryazan bomb, said that the gas analyzer had not been used. He added that the detonator was a hunting cartridge and that it would not be able to detonate any known explosives.
The type of explosives controversy
It was initially reported by the FSB that the explosives used by the terrorists was RDXRDX
RDX, an initialism for Research Department Explosive, is an explosive nitroamine widely used in military and industrial applications. It was developed as an explosive which was more powerful than TNT, and it saw wide use in WWII. RDX is also known as cyclonite, hexogen , and T4...
(or "hexogen"). However, it was officially declared later that the explosive was not RDX, but a mixture of aluminum powder, niter
Niter
Niter or nitre is the mineral form of potassium nitrate, KNO3, also known as saltpeter or saltpetre . Historically, the term "niter" – cognate with "natrium", a Latin word for sodium – has been very vaguely defined, and it has been applied to a variety of other minerals and chemical compounds,...
(saltpeter), sugar
Sugar
Sugar is a class of edible crystalline carbohydrates, mainly sucrose, lactose, and fructose, characterized by a sweet flavor.Sucrose in its refined form primarily comes from sugar cane and sugar beet...
, and TNT prepared by the perpetrators in a concrete mixer
Concrete mixer
A concrete mixer is a device that homogeneously combines cement, aggregate such as sand or gravel, and water to form concrete. A typical concrete mixer uses a revolving drum to mix the components...
at a fertilizer factory in Urus-Martan
Urus-Martan
Urus-Martan is a town and the administrative center of Urus-Martanovsky District of the Chechen Republic, Russia, located on the Martan River. The town is located in the central part of the republic, to the southwest of the capital Grozny. Population:...
, Chechnya. RDX is produced in only one factory in Russia, in the city of Perm
Perm
Perm is a city and the administrative center of Perm Krai, Russia, located on the banks of the Kama River, in the European part of Russia near the Ural Mountains. From 1940 to 1957 it was named Molotov ....
. According to Satter, the FSB changed the story about the type of explosive, since it was difficult to explain how huge amounts of RDX disappeared from the closely guarded Perm facility.
A military storage with RDX disguised as "sugar"
In March 2000, the Russian newspaper Novaya GazetaNovaya Gazeta
Novaya Gazeta is a Russian newspaper well known in the country for its critical and investigative coverage of Russian political and social affairs....
reported the account of Private Alexei Pinyaev of the 137th Regiment who guarded a military facility near the city of Ryazan. He was surprised to see that "a storehouse with weapons and ammunition" contained sacks with the word "sugar" on them. The two paratroopers cut a hole in one of the bags and made tea with the sugar taken from the bag. But the taste of the tea was terrible. They became suspicious since people were talking about the explosions. The substance turned out to be hexogen. After the newspaper report, FSB officers "descended on Pinyaev's unit", accused them of "divulging a state secret", and told them "You guys can't even imagine what serious business you've got yourselves tangled up in." The regiment later sued Novaya Gazeta for insulting the honor of the Russian Army, since there was no Private Alexei Pinyaev in the regiment, according to their statement. At an FSB press conference Private Pinyaev stated that there was no hexogen in the 137th Airborne Regiment and that he was hospitalized in December 1999 and no longer visited the range.
Incident in Russian Parliament
On 13 September, just hours after the second explosion in Moscow, Russian Duma speaker Gennadiy SeleznyovGennadiy Seleznyov
Gennadiy Nikolayevich Seleznyov is a Russian politician who was the Speaker of the Duma from 1996 to 2003.-Journalist:Gennadiy Seleznyov went to school from 1954 to 1964. He went to study journalism and joined the communist party. In 1969 he finished university and started working in the Pravda...
of the Communist Party made an announcement: "I have just received a report. According to information from Rostov-on-Don, an apartment building in the city of Volgodonsk
Volgodonsk
Volgodonsk is a city in Rostov Oblast, Russia, located in the eastern part of the oblast on the west bank of the Tsimlyansk Reservoir. Population: 28,000 .-History:...
was blown up last night". However, the bombing in Volgodonsk took place three days later, on 16 September. When the Volgodonsk bombing happened, Vladimir Zhirinovsky
Vladimir Zhirinovsky
Vladimir Volfovich Zhirinovsky is a Russian politician, colonel of the Russian Army, founder and the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia , Vice-Chairman of the State Duma, and a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe....
demanded an explanation in the Duma, but Seleznev turned his microphone off.
Two years later, in March 2002, Seleznyov claimed in an interview that he had been referring to an unrelated hand grenade
Hand grenade
A hand grenade is any small bomb that can be thrown by hand. Hand grenades are classified into three categories, explosive grenades, chemical and gas grenades. Explosive grenades are the most commonly used in modern warfare, and are designed to detonate after impact or after a set amount of time...
-based explosion, which did not kill anyone and did not destroy any buildings, and which indeed happened in Volgodonsk. It remains unclear why Seleznyov reported such an insignificant incident to the Russian Parliament and why he did not explain the misunderstanding to Zhirinovsky and other Duma members.
FSB defector
Defection
In politics, a defector is a person who gives up allegiance to one state or political entity in exchange for allegiance to another. More broadly, it involves abandoning a person, cause or doctrine to whom or to which one is bound by some tie, as of allegiance or duty.This term is also applied,...
Alexander Litvinenko
Alexander Litvinenko
Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko was an officer who served in the Soviet KGB and its Russian successor, the Federal Security Service ....
described this as "the usual Kontora
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
mess up": "Moscow-2 was on the 13th and Volgodonsk on 16th, but they got it to the speaker the other way around," he said. Investigator Mikhail Trepashkin
Mikhail Trepashkin
Mikhail Ivanovich Trepashkin, is a Moscow attorney and former FSB colonel who was invited by MP Sergei Kovalev to assist in an independent inquiry of the Russian apartment bombings in September 1999 – the atrocities that followed Dagestan war and were one of the triggers for the Second Chechen...
confirmed that the man who gave Seleznev the note was indeed an FSB officer.
Sealing of all materials by Russian Duma
The Russian Duma rejected two motions for parliamentary investigation of the Ryazan incident. The Duma, on a pro-Kremlin party-line voteParty-line vote
A party-line vote in a deliberative assembly is a vote in which every member of a political party votes the same way...
, voted to seal all materials related to the Ryazan incident for the next 75 years and forbade an investigation into what happened.
Arrest of independent investigator Trepashkin
The commission of Sergei Kovalev asked lawyer Mikhail TrepashkinMikhail Trepashkin
Mikhail Ivanovich Trepashkin, is a Moscow attorney and former FSB colonel who was invited by MP Sergei Kovalev to assist in an independent inquiry of the Russian apartment bombings in September 1999 – the atrocities that followed Dagestan war and were one of the triggers for the Second Chechen...
to investigate the case. Trepashkin found that the basement of one of the bombed buildings was rented by FSB officer Vladimir Romanovich and that the latter was witnessed by several people. However, Trepashkin was unable to bring the evidence to court, because he was arrested by FSB in October 2003 (imprisoned in Nizhny Tagil
Nizhny Tagil
Nizhny Tagil is a city in Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia, situated east of the virtual border between Europe and Asia. Population: -History:...
), allegedly for "disclosing state secrets", just a few days before he was to make his findings public. He was sentenced by a military closed court
Secret trial
A secret trial is a trial that is not open to the public, nor generally reported in the news, especially any in-trial proceedings. Generally no official record of the case or the judge's verdict is made available. Often there is no indictment...
to four years imprisonment. Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
issued a statement 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". Romanovich subsequently died in a hit and run
Hit and run (vehicular)
Hit-and-run is the act of causing a traffic accident , and failing to stop and identify oneself afterwards...
accident in Cyprus
Cyprus
Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...
. According to Trepashkin, his supervisors and people from the FSB promised not to arrest him if he left the Kovalev commission and started working with the FSB "against Alexander Litvinenko". Commission chairman Kovalev summarized their findings as follows: "What can I tell? We can prove only one thing: there was no training exercise in the city of Ryazan. Authorities do not want to answer any questions..."
On 10 December 2006 Trepashkin wrote a letter to newspaper Novaya Gazeta
Novaya Gazeta
Novaya Gazeta is a Russian newspaper well known in the country for its critical and investigative coverage of Russian political and social affairs....
where he claimed that the officials of the Regional Directorate against the Organized Crimes (RUOP) of Main Directorate of the Internal Affairs (GUVD) in Moscow arrested several people who were questioned in regards of buying and selling RDX
RDX
RDX, an initialism for Research Department Explosive, is an explosive nitroamine widely used in military and industrial applications. It was developed as an explosive which was more powerful than TNT, and it saw wide use in WWII. RDX is also known as cyclonite, hexogen , and T4...
. Soon after the arrest several officials from the N.P.Petrushev Directorate of FSB came to the headquarters of the GUVD on Shabolovka Street
Shabolovka Street
Shabolovka is one of the original main streets of Moscow which continued to develop in right up until the middle of the 18th Century. The street contains the notable features of the Shukhov Tower designed by Vladimir Shukhovin 1919, and built between 1920–1922, and the attached Broadcasting...
, took all of the material evidences, and ordered to fire all the officials that conducted the arrest. Later sometime in 2000 Trepashkin had meetings with several of the high-ranking officers from the RUOP that disclosed him the whole story. They offered the videocassette containing the footage that led to the arrest of the RDX dealers and offered to appear in court as witnesses. Trepashkin never publicized that to the Public Commission of the State Duma headed by Kovalev to avoid further involvement of the state security services. A similar videocassette possessed Aleksandr Litvinenko with whom Trepashkin contacted as well. Soon thereafter Trepashkin was arrested as a bandit and thrown in a car under a Chechen handgun loaded with seven bullets of the FSB officials which were accusing him in a plot against the President of the Russian Federation and was taken to the city of Dmitrov
Dmitrov
Dmitrov is a town and the administrative center of Dmitrovsky District of Moscow Oblast, Russia, located to the north of Moscow on the Yakhroma River and the Moscow Canal. Population: -History:...
. The whole court process in regards to the bombings took place without him and behind the closed doors to avoid the information leak. Trepashkin was surprised how the officials of FSB found out about his investigations and became suspicious of couple of journalists with whom he conducted his investigations Levitov (survivability of whom he doubted) and V.V.Shebalin. Trepashkin later found that the latter disclosed everything to D.A.Paramonov, the member of FSB.
Soon the controversial Litvinenko affair took place also. In January 2002 after the Shebalin's statement FSB confiscated the Trepashkin's PC where he had the last evidences of his investigations. After the FSB was not able to open the encrypted evidences in Trepashkin's computer they illegally destroyed it.
Claims and denials of responsibility for the blasts
After the first bombings, Moscow mayor Luzhkov asserted that no warning had been given for the attacks. A previously unknown group, protesting against growing consumerism in Russia, claimed responsibility for the blast. A note was found at the site of the explosion from the group, calling itself the Revolutionary Writers, according to the FSB.On 2 September, Al-Khattab announced: "The mujahideen of Dagestan are going to carry out reprisals in various places across Russia.", but Khattab would later on 14 September deny responsibility in the blasts, adding that he is fighting the Russian army, not women and children.
On 9 September, an anonymous person, speaking with a Caucasian
Caucasian race
The term Caucasian race has been used to denote the general physical type of some or all of the populations of Europe, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Western Asia , Central Asia and South Asia...
accent, phoned the Interfax news agency, saying that the blasts in Moscow and Buynaksk were "our response to the bombings of civilians in the villages in Chechnya and Dagestan." In an interview to the Czech newspaper Lidove Noviny
Lidové noviny
Lidové noviny is a daily newspaper published in the Czech Republic. It is the oldest Czech daily. Its profile is nowadays a national news daily covering political, economic, cultural and scientific affairs, mostly with a centre-right, conservative view...
on 9 September, Shamil Basayev denied responsibility, saying: "The latest blast in Moscow is not our work, but the work of the Dagestanis. Russia has been openly terrorizing Dagestan, it encircled three villages in the centre of Dagestan, did not allow women and children to leave." A few days later Basayev denied that Islamist fighters were responsible for the blasts, and instead were connected to "Russian domestic politics." In a later interview, Basayev said he had no idea who was behind the bombings. "Dagestani’s could have done it, or the Russian special services."
From 9 September to 13 September, AP reporter Greg Myre conducted an interview with Ibn Al-Khattab
Ibn al-Khattab
Samir Saleh Abdullah Al-Suwailem , more commonly known as Emir Khattab meaning Commander Khattab, or Leader Khattab, and also known as Habib Abdul Rahman, was a Muslim guerilla fighter and financier working with Chechen Mujahideen in the First Chechen War...
, in which Al-Khattab as said, "From now on, we will not only fight against Russian fighter jets and tanks. From now on, they will get our bombs everywhere. Let Russia await our explosions blasting through their cities. I swear we will do it." The interview was published on 15 September. In a subsequent interview with Interfax, al-Khattab denied involvement in the bombings, saying "We would not like to be akin to those who kill sleeping civilians with bombs and shells."
On 15 September, an unidentified man, again speaking with a Caucasian accent, called the ITAR-TASS news agency, claiming to represent a group called the Liberation Army of Dagestan
Liberation Army of Dagestan
Liberation army of Dagestan ' is a militant group that claimed responsibility for the 1999 Russian apartment bombings.- First phone call :...
. He said that the explosions in Buynaksk and Moscow were carried out by his organization. According to him, the attacks were a retaliation to the deaths of Muslim women and children during Russian air raids in Dagestan. "We will answer death with death," the caller said. Russian officials from both the Interior Ministry and FSB, at the time, expressed skepticism over the claims. Sergei Bogdanov, of the FSB press service in Moscow, said that the words of a previously unknown individual representing a semi-mythical organization should not be considered as reliable. Mr. Bogdanov insisted that the organization had nothing to do with the bombing. On 15 September 1999 a Dagestani official also denied the existence of a "Dagestan Liberation Army".
Evidence that the bombings were staged
In his book Darkness at Dawn Satter reported that on 6 June 1999, three months before the bombings, Swedish journalist Jan Blomgren wrote in Svenska DagbladetSvenska Dagbladet
Svenska Dagbladet is a daily newspaper in Sweden. The first issue appeared on 18 December 1884. Svenska Dagbladet is published in Stockholm and provides coverage of national and international news as well as local coverage of the Greater Stockholm region...
that one of options considered by the Kremlin leaders was "a series of terror bombings in Moscow that could be blamed on the Chechens." Satter also noted that on 22 July, the Moscow newspaper Moskovskaya Pravda published leaked documents about an operation, "Storm in Moscow", which, by organizing terrorist acts to cause chaos, would bring about a state of emergency, thus saving the Yeltsin regime.
Duma member Konstantin Borovoi said that he had been "warned by an agent of Russian military intelligence of a wave of terrorist bombings" prior to the blasts.
Criminal investigation and court ruling
The official investigation was concluded in 2002. According to the Russian State Prosecutor office, all apartment bombings were executed under command of ethnic Karachay Achemez Gochiyayev. The operations were planned by Ibn al-KhattabIbn al-Khattab
Samir Saleh Abdullah Al-Suwailem , more commonly known as Emir Khattab meaning Commander Khattab, or Leader Khattab, and also known as Habib Abdul Rahman, was a Muslim guerilla fighter and financier working with Chechen Mujahideen in the First Chechen War...
and Abu Omar al-Saif
Abu Omar al-Saif
Abu Omar al-Saif was an informal name or nom de guerre of a Saudi Islamist and fighter operating first in Afghanistan and later in the North Caucasus as the mufti of Arab fighters in Chechnya, allegedly with close ties to al-Qaeda. His full name was Muhammad bin Abdullah bin Saif al-Tamimi...
, Arab militants fighting in Chechnya on the side of Chechen insurgents. Both Russia and USA accuse Al-Khattab of having direct links with Al-Qaida, though Khattab himself has always denied this. Al-Khattab and al-Saif were later killed during the Second Chechen War
Second Chechen War
The Second Chechen War, in a later phase better known as the War in the North Caucasus, was launched by the Russian Federation starting 26 August 1999, in response to the Invasion of Dagestan by the Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigade ....
. The planning was carried out in Khattab's guerilla camps in Chechnya, "Caucasus" in Shatoy
Shatoy
Shatoy or Shatoi is a village in the Chechen Republic, Russia. It is the administrative center of Shatoysky District. Population: 1,771 . It is the home village of underground rebel President Doku Umarov. Geographical location: ....
and "Taliban" in Avtury
Avtury
Avtury is a village in Shalinsky District of the Chechen Republic, Russia, located on the Khulkhulau River, east of Shali. Population:...
, according to the prosecution. Gochiyaev's group was trained at Chechen rebel bases in the towns of Serzhen-Yurt and Urus-Martan. The group's "technical instructors" were two Arab field commanders, Abu Umar and Abu Djafar, Al-Khattab was the bombings' brainchild. The explosives were prepared at a fertilizer factory in Urus-Martan
Urus-Martan
Urus-Martan is a town and the administrative center of Urus-Martanovsky District of the Chechen Republic, Russia, located on the Martan River. The town is located in the central part of the republic, to the southwest of the capital Grozny. Population:...
Chechnya, by "mixing aluminium powder, nitre and sugar in a concrete mixer", or by also putting their RDX and TNT. From there they were sent to a food storage facility in Kislovodsk
Kislovodsk
Kislovodsk is a city in Stavropol Krai, Russia, which lies in the North Caucasian region of the country, between the Black and Caspian Seas. The closest airport is located in the city of Mineralnye Vody. Population:...
, which was managed by an uncle of one of the terrorists, Yusuf Krymshakhalov. Another conspirator, Ruslan Magayayev, leased a KamAZ
Kamaz
KAMAZ is a Russian truck manufacturer located in Naberezhnye Chelny, Tatarstan, Russian Federation. KAMAZ opened their doors in 1976...
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.
Court ruling on events in Moscow
Al-Khattab paid Gochiyayev $500,000 to carry out the attacks at Guryanova Street, Kashirskoye HighwayKashirskoye Highway
Kashirskoye Highway or Kashira Highway is a major street in Moscow, Russia, continued as a highway beyond the city into Moscow Oblast as a backup route for highway M4. It was named in the 19th century after the old Kashira Road, which led to the town of Kashira. It was one of the sites of the...
, and Borisovskiye Prudy, and then helped to hide Gochiyayev and his accomplices in Chechnya. In early September, 1999, Magayayev, Krymshamkhalov, Batchayev and Dekkushev reloaded the cargo into a Mercedes-Benz 2236 trailer and delivered it to Moscow. En route, they were protected from possible complications by an accomplice, Khakim Abayev, who accompanied the trailer in another car. In Moscow they were met by Achemez Gochiyayev, who registered in Hotel Altai under the fake name "Laipanov", and Denis Saitakov. The explosives were left in a warehouse
Warehouse
A warehouse is a commercial building for storage of goods. Warehouses are used by manufacturers, importers, exporters, wholesalers, transport businesses, customs, etc. They are usually large plain buildings in industrial areas of cities and towns. They usually have loading docks to load and unload...
in Ulitsa Krasnodonskaya, which was leased by pseudo-Laipanov (Gochiyayev.) The next day, the explosives were delivered in "ZIL-5301" vans to three addresses – Ulitsa Guryanova, Kashirskoye Shosse and Ulitsa Borisovskiye Prudy, where pseudo-Laipanov leased cellars. Gochiyayev supervised the placement of the bombs in the rented cellars. Next followed the explosions at the former two addresses. The explosion at 16 Borisovskiye Prudy was prevented. 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 know Gochiyaev". They said that someone "who posed as a jihad leader had duped them into the operation" by hiring them to transport his explosives, and they later realized this man was working for the FSB. They claimed that bombings were directed by German Ugryumov
German Ugryumov
German Alexeyevich Ugryumov was a Soviet and Russian navy and security services official. During his childhood he lived in Chelyabinsk Oblast.-Naval counterintelligence career:...
who supervised the FSB Alpha
Alpha Group
The Alpha Group , is an elite component of Russia's Spetsnaz as well as the dedicated counter-terrorism unit of the Federal Security Service...
and Vympel
Vympel
Vympel , also known as KGB Directorate "B" ,Vega Group or Spetsgruppa V, Group B is a Russian special forces unit....
special forces units at that time.
Court ruling on events in Buinaksk
The 4 September Buinaksk bombings were ordered by Al-Khattab, who promised the bombers $300,000 to drive their truck bombs into the center of the compound, which would have destroyed four apartment buildings simultaneously. However, the bombers parked on an adjacent street instead and blew up only one building. At the trial they complained that Khattab had not given them all the money he owed them. One of the bombers confessed working for Al-Khattab, but claimed he did not know the explosives were intended to blow up the military apartment buildings.Court ruling on events in Volgodonsk
According to Dekkushev's confession he, together with Krymshamkhalov and Batchayev, prepared the explosives, transported them to VolgodonskVolgodonsk
Volgodonsk is a city in Rostov Oblast, Russia, located in the eastern part of the oblast on the west bank of the Tsimlyansk Reservoir. Population: 28,000 .-History:...
, and randomly picked the apartment building on Octyabrskoye Shosse to blow up. Abu Omar
Abu Omar
Abu Omar may refer to:*Abu Abdullah al-Rashid al-Baghdadi , also known as Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, Iraqi insurgent*Abu Omar al-Kurdi, real name Sami Muhammad Ali Said al-Jaaf, bomb maker who worked in Iraq...
had promised to pay him for the job, but Dekkushev never got a single kopeck. According to Dekkushev, it wasn't the FSB that ordered the bombing, as Boris Berezovsky later claimed, but the United States Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
(CIA).
Sentences
Two members of Gochiyayev's group, which had carried out the attacks, Adam Dekkushev and Yusuf Crymshamhalov, have both been sentenced to life terms in a special-regime colony. Both defendants have pleaded guilty only to some of the charges. For instance, Dekkushev acknowledged that he knew the explosives he transported were to be used for an act of terror. Dekkushev also confirmed Gochiyaev's role in the attacks. Dekkushev was extradited to Russia on 14 April 2002 to stand trial. Crymshamhalov was apprehended and extradicted to Moscow. In 2000, six bombers involved in the Buynaksk attack were arrested in Azerbaijan and convicted of the bombing. Achemez GochiyaevAchemez Gochiyaev
Achemez Gochiyayev is a Russian citizen who was accused of organizing Russian apartment bombings, a series of terrorist acts in 1999 that killed nearly 300 people and led the country into the Second Chechen War...
, the head of the group that carried out the attacks and allegedly the main organizer, remains a fugitive, and is under an international search warrant. In a statement released in January, 2004, the FSB said, "until we arrest Gochiyayev, the investigation of the apartment bloc bombings of 1999 will not be finished."
Suspects and accused
In September 1999, hundreds of Chechen nationals (out of the more than 100,000 permanently living in Moscow) were briefly detained and interrogated in Moscow, as a wave of anti-Chechen sentiments swept the city. All of them turned out to be innocent. According to the official investigation, the following people either delivered explosives, stored them, or harbored other suspects:- Ibn al-Khattab (a Saudi-born Mujahid), who was killed by the FSB in 2002.
Moscow bombings
- Achemez Gochiyayev (an ethnic Karachai, has not been arrested; he is still at large)
- Denis Saitakov (an ethnic Tatar from UzbekistanUzbekistanUzbekistan , officially the Republic of Uzbekistan is a doubly landlocked country in Central Asia and one of the six independent Turkic states. It shares borders with Kazakhstan to the west and to the north, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east, and Afghanistan and Turkmenistan to the south....
, killed in GeorgiaGeorgia (country)Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...
in 1999–2000) - Khakim Abayev (An ethnic Karachai, killed by FSB special forces in May 2004 in IngushetiaIngushetiaThe Republic of Ingushetia is a federal subject of Russia , located in the North Caucasus region with its capital at Magas. In terms of area, the republic is the smallest of Russia's federal subjects except for the two federal cities, Moscow and Saint Petersburg...
) - Ravil Akhmyarov (a Russian citizen, Surname indicates an ethnic Tatar, killed in Chechnya in 1999–2000)
- Yusuf Krymshamkhalov (an ethnic Karachai and Resident of KislovodskKislovodskKislovodsk is a city in Stavropol Krai, Russia, which lies in the North Caucasian region of the country, between the Black and Caspian Seas. The closest airport is located in the city of Mineralnye Vody. Population:...
, arrested in Georgia in December 2002, extradited to Russia and sentenced to life imprisonmentLife imprisonmentLife imprisonment is a sentence of imprisonment for a serious crime under which the convicted person is to remain in jail for the rest of his or her life...
in January 2004, after a two-month secret trialSecret trialA secret trial is a trial that is not open to the public, nor generally reported in the news, especially any in-trial proceedings. Generally no official record of the case or the judge's verdict is made available. Often there is no indictment...
held without a juryJuryA jury is a sworn body of people convened to render an impartial verdict officially submitted to them by a court, or to set a penalty or judgment. Modern juries tend to be found in courts to ascertain the guilt, or lack thereof, in a crime. In Anglophone jurisdictions, the verdict may be guilty,...
) - Stanislav Lyubichev (a traffic policeTraffic policeTraffic police or Traffic cops may refer to:*Police controlling traffic, see rules of the road*Traffic Cops, a BBC real-life documentary*Highway patrol*Road Policing Unit*Traffic Guard*Sri Lankan Traffic Police*Municipal police...
inspector, resident of Kislovodsk, Stavropol KraiStavropol KraiStavropol Krai is a federal subject of Russia . Its administrative center is the city of Stavropol. Population: -Geography:Stavropol Krai encompasses the central part of the Fore-Caucasus and most of the northern slopes of Caucasus Major...
, 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)
Volgodonsk bombing
- Timur Batchayev (an ethnic Karachai, killed in Georgia in the clash with police during which Krymshakhalov was arrested)
- Zaur Batchayev (an ethnic Karachai killed in Chechnya in 1999–2000)
- Adam Dekkushev (an ethnic Karachai, 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)
Buinaksk bombing
- Isa Zainutdinov (an ethnic AvarCaucasian AvarsAvars or Caucasian Avars are a modern people of Caucasus, mainly of Dagestan, in which they are the predominant group. The Caucasian Avar language belongs to the Northeast Caucasian language family ....
and native of Dagestan, sentenced to life imprisonment in March 2001) - Alisultan Salikhov (an ethnic Avar and native of Dagestan, sentenced to life imprisonment in March 2001)
- Magomed Salikhov (an ethnic Avar and native of Dagestan, arrested in AzerbaijanAzerbaijanAzerbaijan , officially the Republic of Azerbaijan is the largest country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west, and Iran to...
in November 2004, extradited to Russia, found not guilty on the charge of terrorism by the jury on 24 January 2006; found guilty of participating in an armed force and illegal crossing of the national border, he was retried again on the same charges on 13 November 2006 and again found not guilty, this time on all charges, including the ones he was found guilty of in the first trial. According to KommersantKommersantKommersant is a commerce-oriented newspaper published in Russia. , the circulation was 131,000.- History :The newspaper was initially published in 1909, and it was closed down following the Bolshevik seizure of power and the introduction of censorship in 1917.In 1989, with the onset of press...
Salikhov admitted that he made a delivery of paint to Dagestan for Ibn al-Khattab, although he was not sure what was really delivered.) - Ziyavudin Ziyavudinov (a native of Dagestan, arrested in KazakhstanKazakhstanKazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Ranked as the ninth largest country in the world, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of is greater than Western Europe...
, extradited to Russia, sentenced to 24 years in April 2002) - Abdulkadyr Abdulkadyrov (an ethnic Avar and native of Dagestan, sentenced to 9 years in March 2001)
- Magomed Magomedov (Sentenced to 9 years in March 2001)
- Zainutdin Zainutdinov (an ethnic Avar and native of Dagestan, sentenced to 3 years in March 2001 and immediately released under amnestyAmnestyAmnesty is a legislative or executive act by which a state restores those who may have been guilty of an offense against it to the positions of innocent people, without changing the laws defining the offense. It includes more than pardon, in as much as it obliterates all legal remembrance of the...
) - Makhach Abdulsamedov (a native of Dagestan, sentenced to 3 years in March 2001 and immediately released under amnesty).
Attempts at independent investigation
The Russian DumaState Duma
The State Duma , common abbreviation: Госду́ма ) in the Russian Federation is the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia , the upper house being the Federation Council of Russia. The Duma headquarters is located in central Moscow, a few steps from Manege Square. Its members are referred to...
rejected two motions for parliamentary investigation of the Ryazan incident.
An independent public commission to investigate the bombings, which was chaired by Duma deputy Sergei Kovalev
Sergei Kovalev
Sergei Kovalev is a Russian human rights activist and politician and a former Soviet dissident and political prisoner.- Early career and arrest :...
, was rendered ineffective because of government refusal to respond to its inquiries.
In a 2002 interview to Echo Moskvy Mr. Kovalev commented on the Ryazan incident:
Two key members of the Kovalev Commission, Sergei Yushenkov
Sergei Yushenkov
Sergei Yushenkov was a liberal Russian politician well known for his uncompromising struggle for democracy, rapid free market economic reforms, and higher human rights standards in Russia...
and Yuri Shchekochikhin
Yuri Shchekochikhin
Yuri Petrovich Shchekochikhin was a Russian investigative journalist, writer, and liberal lawmaker of Russian parliament. Shchekochikhin made his name writing about and campaigning against the influence of organized crime and corruption...
, both Duma members, have since died in apparent assassinations in April 2003 and July 2003, respectively. Another member of the commission, Otto Lacis
Otto Lacis
Otto Rudolfovich Latsis was a Soviet and Russian journalist, of Latvian descent.-Journalist career:After graduating from Moscow State University in 1956, Otto Latsis began working in a local newspaper, "Soviet Sakhalin". His subsequent work at the newspaper "Экономическая Газета" , began build...
, was assaulted in November 2003 and two years later, on 3 November 2005, he died in a hospital after a car accident.
The commission asked lawyer Mikhail Trepashkin
Mikhail Trepashkin
Mikhail Ivanovich Trepashkin, is a Moscow attorney and former FSB colonel who was invited by MP Sergei Kovalev to assist in an independent inquiry of the Russian apartment bombings in September 1999 – the atrocities that followed Dagestan war and were one of the triggers for the Second Chechen...
to investigate the case. Mr. Trepashkin claimed to have found that the basement of one of the bombed buildings was rented by FSB officer Vladimir Romanovich and that the latter was witnessed by several people. Mr. Trepashkin was unable to bring the alleged evidence to the court because he was arrested in October 2003 for illegal arms possession, just a few days shortly before he was to make his findings public. He was sentenced by a Moscow military court to four years imprisonment for disclosing state secrets. Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
issued a statement 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". Romanovich subsequently died in a hit and run
Hit and run (vehicular)
Hit-and-run is the act of causing a traffic accident , and failing to stop and identify oneself afterwards...
accident in Cyprus
Cyprus
Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...
.
However, in 2009 Russian Novaya Gazeta
Novaya Gazeta
Novaya Gazeta is a Russian newspaper well known in the country for its critical and investigative coverage of Russian political and social affairs....
newspaper published a note, which stated that Romanovich died more than a year before the apartment bombings took place:
Mr. Trepashkin investigated a letter attributed to Achemez Gochiyayev and found that the alleged assistant of Gochiyayev who arranged the delivery of sacks might have been Kapstroi-2000 vice-president Kormishin, a resident of Vyazma
Vyazma
Vyazma is a town and the administrative center of Vyazemsky District of Smolensk Oblast, Russia, located on the Vyazma River, about halfway between Smolensk and Mozhaysk. Throughout its turbulent history, the city defended western approaches to the city of Moscow...
.
According to Mr. Trepashkin, his supervisors and the people from the FSB promised not to arrest him if he left the Kovalev commission and started working together with the FSB "against Alexander Litvinenko".
On 24 March 2000, two days before the presidential elections
Russian presidential election, 2000
Russian presidential elections were held on 26 March 2000. Incumbent Prime Minister, and acting President Vladimir Putin, who had succeeded Boris Yeltsin on his resignation December 31, 1999, was seeking a four-year term in his own right and won the elections in the first round. Polling stations...
, NTV Russia
NTV Russia
NTV is a Russian television channel. As a subsidiary of Vladimir Gusinsky's company Media-Most, it was a pioneer in the post-Soviet independent television media, but was later taken over by state-owned Gazprom.- History :...
featured the Ryazan events of Fall 1999 in the talk show Independent Investigation. The talk with the residents of the Ryazan apartment building along with FSB public relations director Alexander Zdanovich and Ryazan branch head Alexander Sergeyev was filmed few days earlier. On 26 March Boris Nemtsov
Boris Nemtsov
Boris Efimovich Nemtsov is a Russian politician who was Deputy Prime Minister of Russia from 1997 to 1998. He was a co-founder of the Russian political party Union of Right Forces and is an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin.-Early life:...
voiced his concern over the possible shut-down of NTV for airing the talk. Seven months later NTV general manager Igor Malashenko said at the JFK School of Government
John F. Kennedy School of Government
The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University is a public policy and public administration school, and one of Harvard's graduate and professional schools...
that Information Minister Mikhail Lesin
Mikhail Lesin
Mikhail Yuriyevich Lesin is a Russian political figure, and currently an adviser to the Russian president. Lesin is credited as the creator of the RT television news network "to establish a news channel that would counter CNN and BBC -- with a Moscow spin"...
warned him on several occasions. Mr. Malashenko's recollection of Mr. Lesin's warning was that by airing the talk show NTV "crossed the line" and that the NTV managers were "outlaws" in the eyes of the Kremlin. According to Alexander Goldfarb, Mr. Malashenko told him that Valentin Yumashev
Valentin Yumashev
Valentin Yumashev is a Russian journalist and politician, member of the inner circle of President Boris Yeltsin. He was Editor-in-Chief of Ogonyok in 1995-1996. In 1996 he was appointed adviser to President Boris Yeltsin for public relations. In March 1997 Yumashev succeeded Anatoly Chubais in the...
brought a warning from the Kremlin, one day before airing the show, promising in no uncertain terms that the NTV managers "should consider themselves finished" if they went ahead with the broadcast.
Artyom Borovik
Artyom Borovik
Artyom Genrikhovich Borovik was a prominent Russian journalist and media magnate. He was the son of a Soviet journalist, Genrikh Borovik, who worked for many years as a foreign correspondent in the U.S.-Journalism:...
told Grigory Yavlinsky that Borovik investigated the Moscow apartment bombings and prepared a series of publications about them. Mr. Borovik received numerous death threats, and he died in an airplane crash in March 2000.
Journalist Anna Politkovskaya
Anna Politkovskaya
Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya was a Russian journalist, author, and human rights activist known for her opposition to the Chechen conflict and then-President of Russia Vladimir Putin...
and former security service member Alexander Litvinenko
Alexander Litvinenko
Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko was an officer who served in the Soviet KGB and its Russian successor, the Federal Security Service ....
, who investigated the bombings, were killed in 2006.
Surviving victims of the Guryanova street bombing asked President Dmitry Medvedev
Dmitry Medvedev
Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev is the third President of the Russian Federation.Born to a family of academics, Medvedev graduated from the Law Department of Leningrad State University in 1987. He defended his dissertation in 1990 and worked as a docent at his alma mater, now renamed to Saint...
to resume the investigation in 2008.
Theory of Russian government conspiracy
Yury Felshtinsky, Alexander LitvinenkoAlexander Litvinenko
Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko was an officer who served in the Soviet KGB and its Russian successor, the Federal Security Service ....
, David Satter
David Satter
David Satter is a former Moscow correspondent and expert on Russia and the Soviet Union who wrote books about the decline and fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of post-Soviet Russia.-Life and career:...
, Boris Kagarlitsky, Vladimir Pribylovsky
Vladimir Pribylovsky
Vladimir Valerianovich Pribylovsky is a Russian historian, journalist and human rights advocate opposed to current Russian authorities.-Biography:...
, the secessionist Chechen authorities claimed that the 1999 bombings were a false flag
False flag
False flag operations are covert operations designed to deceive the public in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by other entities. The name is derived from the military concept of flying false colors; that is flying the flag of a country other than one's own...
attack coordinated by the FSB in order to win public support for a new full-scale war in Chechnya, which boosted Prime Minister and former FSB Director Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin served as the second President of the Russian Federation and is the current Prime Minister of Russia, as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when...
's popularity, and brought the pro-war Unity Party
Unity (political party)
Unity was a Russian political party that was created in September 1999 and registered on October 15, supported by Russia’s President Boris Yeltsin, PM Vladimir Putin and dozens of Russian governors to counter the threat which the Kremlin perceived from the Fatherland-All Russia alliance...
to the State Duma
State Duma
The State Duma , common abbreviation: Госду́ма ) in the Russian Federation is the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia , the upper house being the Federation Council of Russia. The Duma headquarters is located in central Moscow, a few steps from Manege Square. Its members are referred to...
and Putin to the presidency within a few months.
According to the theory, the bombings were a successful coup d'état
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...
organized by the FSB to bring future Russian president Vladimir Putin to power. Some of them described the bombings as typical "active measures
Active measures
Active Measures were a form of political warfare conducted by the Soviet security services to influence the course of world events, "in addition to collecting intelligence and producing politically correct assessment of it". Active measures ranged "from media manipulations to special actions...
" practiced by the KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
in the past. David Satter stated, during his testimony in the United States House of Representatives
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...
,
In a 2002 interview to Echo Moskvy Sergei Kovalev referred to the theory of Felshtinsky and Pribylovsky as a "pure conspiracy", albeit stating that every theory should be checked.
Other investigations
Maura Reynolds from Los Angeles Times investigated Ryazan events by interviewing and quoting Alexei Kartofelnikov, one of the 2 residents who persisted in calling militia, Tatyana Borycheva, Tatyana Lukichyova, also residents, Lt. Col. Sergei Kabashov, Yuri Bludov, the spokesman for the regional FSB.Helen Womack from The Independent quoted Alexei Kartofelnikov's daughter Yulia, police officer Major Vladimir Golev, Lt. Col. of the Ryazan police Sergei Kabashov.
John Sweeney
John Sweeney (journalist)
John Sweeney is an award-winning journalist and author, currently working as an investigative journalist for the BBC's Panorama series.- Investigative journalism :...
a journalist at Observer, later for BBC, quoted Vladimir Vasiliev, one of the 2 Ryazan apartment residents who tipped militsia, an "inspector" "from the local police" Andrei Chernyshev, "grandmother Clara Stepanovna", "head of the local bomb squad" Yuri Tkachenko, head of the regional FSB Alexander Sergeyev and others.
Statements in support
U.S. SenatorUnited States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
and presidential candidate John McCain
John McCain
John Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....
said that there remained "credible allegations that Russia's FSB had a hand in carrying out these [Moscow apartment bombing] attacks".
Paul Khlebnikov wrote that former Security Council chief Alexandr Lebed in his 17 February 1997 interview with Le Figaro
Le Figaro
Le Figaro is a French daily newspaper founded in 1826 and published in Paris. It is one of three French newspapers of record, with Le Monde and Libération, and is the oldest newspaper in France. It is also the second-largest national newspaper in France after Le Parisien and before Le Monde, but...
was almost convinced that the government organized the terrorist attacks against its own citizens.
According to Johann Hari
Johann Hari
Johann Hari is an award winning British journalist who has been a columnist at The Independent, the The Huffington Post, and contributed to several other publications. In 2011, Hari was accused of plagiarism; he subsequently was suspended from The Independent and surrendered his 2008 Orwell Prize...
, "the FSB is simply the renamed KGB, whose raison d'etre for decades was essentially institutional terror in the service of the government
Active measures
Active Measures were a form of political warfare conducted by the Soviet security services to influence the course of world events, "in addition to collecting intelligence and producing politically correct assessment of it". Active measures ranged "from media manipulations to special actions...
. 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".
A famous American author in military strategy J.R. Nyquist suggested that Russian secret military operation should also be considered.
Officials
In 2000, Russia's President Vladimir Putin dismissed the allegations of FSB involvement in the bombings as "delirious nonsense." "There are no people in the Russian secret services who would be capable of such crime against their own people. The very allegation is immoral," he said. An FSB spokesman said that "Litvinenko's evidence cannot be taken seriously by those who are investigating the bombings".
Sergei Markov, an advisor to the Russian government, criticized the film Assassination of Russia which supported the FSB involvement theory. Markov said that the film was "a well-made professional example of the propagandist and psychological war that Boris Berezovsky is notoriously good at." Markov found parallels between the film and the conspiracy theory
9/11 conspiracy theories
9/11 conspiracy theories are theories that disagree with the widely accepted account that the September 11 attacks were perpetrated solely by al-Qaeda. These theories arose because of what proponents of the conspiracy theories believe to be inconsistencies in the official conclusions or some...
that the United States and/or Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
organized the 9/11 attacks to justify military actions.
Scholars
According to researcher Gordon Bennett, the conspiracy theory that the FSB was behind the bombings is kept alive by the Russian oligarch and Kremlin-critic Boris Berezovsky. Bennett points out that neither Berezovsky nor his team (which includes Alexander Litvinenko) have provided any evidence to support their claims. In the BBC World
BBC World
BBC World News is the BBC's international news and current affairs television channel. It has the largest audience of any BBC channel in the world...
Hard Talk interview on 8 May 2002, Berezovsky was also unable to present any evidence for his claims, and he did not suggest he was in possession of such evidence which he would be ready to present in a court. Bennett also points out that Putin's critics often forget that the decision to send troops to Chechnya was taken by Boris Yeltsin — not Vladimir Putin — with the wholehearted support of all power structures.
Professor Richard Sakwa
Richard Sakwa
Richard Sakwa is an expert in the field of Russian and Eastern European communist and post-communist politics. Sakwa is Professor of Russian and European politics at the University of Kent.-Career:...
has commented on the claims of Berezovsky and Litvinenko, saying that the evidence they presented was at best circumstantial.
Dr. Mike Bowker, from the University of East Anglia
University of East Anglia
The University of East Anglia is a public research university based in Norwich, United Kingdom. It was established in 1963, and is a founder-member of the 1994 Group of research-intensive universities.-History:...
, has said that the inference that the bombings were carried out by the Russian authorities is uncorroborated by evidence. According to Bowker, the theory also ignores the history of Chechen terrorism and public threats by various Chechen rebels following their defeat in Dagestan – which included Khattab telling a Czech and a German newspaper, a few days before the bombings in Moscow, that "Russian women and children will pay for the crimes of Russian generals." and that "this will not happen tomorrow, but the day after tomorrow"
Dr. Vlad Sobell has pointed out that the proponents of the theory that the second invasion of Chechnya was a plot by Putin to get elected regularly ignore the key fact that Putin's attack on Chechnya in 1999 was preceded by a Chechen insurrection in Dagestan, whose objective was to turn it into another unstable Chechnya.
According to Associate Professor Henry E. Hale of Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, one thing that remains unclear about the "FSB did it" theory: If the motive was to get an FSB-friendly man installed as president, why would the FSB have preferred Putin, a little-known "upstart" who had leapt to the post of FSB director through outside political channels, to Primakov, who was certainly senior in stature and pedigree and who was also widely reputed to have a KGB past?
According to Dr. Robert Bruce Ware
Robert Bruce Ware
Robert Bruce Ware is Professor of Philosophy at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. He is the author of Hegel: The Logic of Self-consciousness and the Legacy of Subjective Freedom...
of Southern Illinois University
Southern Illinois University
Southern Illinois University is a state university system based in Carbondale, Illinois, in the Southern Illinois region of the state, with multiple campuses...
, "The assertions that Russian security services are responsible for the bombings is at least partially incorrect, and appears to have given rise to an obscurantist mythology of Russian culpability. At the very least, it is clear that these assertions are incomplete in so far as they have not taken full account of the evidence suggesting the responsibility of Wahhabis under the leadership of Khattab, who may have been seeking retribution for the federal assault upon Dagestan's Islamic Djamaat."
Dr. Kirill Pankratov, in a 2003 letter to the Johnson's Russia List
Johnson's Russia List
Johnson's Russia List is an email newsletter containing Russia-related news and analysis in English. David Johnson is the list's editor. The JRL generally comes out one or more times per day. JRL's content includes articles syndicated from other media outlets, as well as comments contributed by...
, spoke against Satter's and Putley's theory. He noted that 1) there was no need for "another pretext for military operation in Chechnya at the time of the Ryazan incident", but there were already a "plenty of reasons for decisive military response", 2) the FSB of other security service was institutionally incapable of such a conspiracy after years of decline in the 1990s, 3) the conspirators were not actually trying to blow a building up in Ryazan; however, their sloppy actions are "consistent with the training exercise version of events", 4) the FSB did not have to declare the incident a "training exercise", but "it was much easier to show great relief... and continue trying to find the perpetrators of the bombing attempt."
Security and policy analysts Simon Saradzhyan
Simon Saradzhyan
Simon Saradzhyan is a research fellow at Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. Saradzhyan has previously worked as deputy editor of Moscow Times and has contributed articles for many other publications as well, such The Times, the Sunday Telegraph, Defense News,...
and Nabi Abdullaev noted that Litvinenko and Felshtinsky did not provide any direct evidence to back up their claims about FSB involvement in the bombings.
Analysts
Andrey Soldatov is skeptical about Mikhail Trepashkin
Mikhail Trepashkin
Mikhail Ivanovich Trepashkin, is a Moscow attorney and former FSB colonel who was invited by MP Sergei Kovalev to assist in an independent inquiry of the Russian apartment bombings in September 1999 – the atrocities that followed Dagestan war and were one of the triggers for the Second Chechen...
's awareness of the details of the Russian apartment bombings. According to Soldatov, the Russian government's suppression of the discussion of the FSB involvement theory reflects paranoia rather than guilt on its part. He points out that, ironically, the paranoia produced the conspiracy theories that the government was keen to stamp out.
In 2009, Russian journalist and radio host Yulia Latynina
Yulia Latynina
Yulia Leonidovna Latynina is a Russian journalist, writer and radio host. She works at the radio station Echo of Moscow. She also writes for Novaya Gazeta and The Moscow Times.-Writer, journalist and radio host:...
, commenting on Scott Anderson
Scott Anderson
Scott Anderson may refer to:*Scott Anderson , former MLB pitcher*Scott Anderson , a character in UK soap opera Hollyoaks*Scott Anderson , war correspondent for and author...
's article "Vladimir Putin's Dark Rise to Power" noted that deaths of Sergey Yushenkov and Yury Schekochihin "in any case, had no relation to bombings in Moscow". Latynina opined, that the version that FSB did the bombings was not only absurd, but purposefully invented by Berezovsky after he was deprived of the power. Her major argument was, that since Berezovsky was one of the key figures to push Putin into the power, he knew for certain the theory was wrong. If Berezovsky felt that "there are some people else beyond Putin, some fearsome siloviks who can explode houses, they [the Family] would throw Putin away, as a hot potato".
Theory of Ibn Al Khattab's Involvement
Paul J. Murphy, a former US counterterrorism expert stated that "the evidence that Al-Khattab was responsible for the apartment building bombings in Moscow is clear". Murphy also states "the findings by the Russian government prove that the Liberation Army of DagestanLiberation Army of Dagestan
Liberation army of Dagestan ' is a militant group that claimed responsibility for the 1999 Russian apartment bombings.- First phone call :...
, which claimed responsibility for the attacks, is the same as Al-Khattab's Islamic Army of Dagestan, which launched the invasion of Dagestan from Chechnya in August, 1999".
Professor Peter Reddaway and researcher Dmitri Glinski described the involvement of the Liberation Army of Dagestan
Liberation Army of Dagestan
Liberation army of Dagestan ' is a militant group that claimed responsibility for the 1999 Russian apartment bombings.- First phone call :...
as the best explanation for the bombings.
According to Dr. Robert Bruce Ware
Robert Bruce Ware
Robert Bruce Ware is Professor of Philosophy at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. He is the author of Hegel: The Logic of Self-consciousness and the Legacy of Subjective Freedom...
, an associate professor of Southern Illinois University
Southern Illinois University
Southern Illinois University is a state university system based in Carbondale, Illinois, in the Southern Illinois region of the state, with multiple campuses...
, the best explanation for the apartment block blasts is that they were perpetrated by Wahhabis under the leadership of Khattab, as retribution for the federal attacks on Karamachi, Chabanmakhi, and Kadar. "If the blasts were organized by Khattab and other Wahhabis as retribution for the federal attacks on Dagestan's Islamic Djamaat, then this would explain the timing of the attacks, and why there were no attacks after the date on which fighting in Dagestan was concluded. It would explain why no Chechen claimed responsibility. It would account for Basayev's reference to Dagestani responsibility, and it would be consistent with Khattab's vow to set off bombs everywhere... blasting through [Russian] cities."
In March 2010 article Yulia Latynina wrote:
Chronology of events of June–October of 1999
- 18 June, — attacks on two pickets of Interior troops at the ChechnyaChechnyaThe Chechen Republic , commonly referred to as Chechnya , also spelled Chechnia or Chechenia, sometimes referred to as Ichkeria , is a federal subject of Russia . It is located in the southeastern part of Europe in the Northern Caucasus mountains. The capital of the republic is the city of Grozny...
-DagestanDagestanThe Republic of Dagestan is a federal subject of Russia, located in the North Caucasus region. Its capital and the largest city is Makhachkala, located at the center of Dagestan on the Caspian Sea...
were performed from the side of Chechnya, as well as offense against a company of Cossacks in Stavropol KraiStavropol KraiStavropol Krai is a federal subject of Russia . Its administrative center is the city of Stavropol. Population: -Geography:Stavropol Krai encompasses the central part of the Fore-Caucasus and most of the northern slopes of Caucasus Major...
took place. Russian authorities closed most of checkpoints on the Chechen border. - 23 June, — shooting of an Interior troops picket at Pervomaiskoe village of Khasavyurtovsky DistrictKhasavyurtovsky DistrictKhasavyurtovsky District is an administrative and a municipal district , one of the forty-one in the Republic of Dagestan, Russia. The area of the district is . Its administrative center is the city of Khasavyurt...
in Dagestan from Chechnya. - 23 July, — Chechen militants attacked an Interior troops pictet in Dagestan which defended Kopaevsky Hydro Scheme. MVD of Dagestan claimed that "this time Chechens performed a reconnaissance in force, and soon large scale actions by armed gangs will take place along the whole Dagestan-Chechen border."
- 29 July, — Aslan MaskhadovAslan MaskhadovAslan Aliyevich Maskhadov was a leader of the Chechen separatist movement and the third President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.He was credited by many with the Chechen victory in the First Chechen War, which allowed for the...
accused Western security services of exacerbating tensions at Chechen-Dagestan border. - 1 August, — Dagestani Wahhabis and Chechens who supported them claimed that ShariaShariaSharia law, is the moral code and religious law of Islam. Sharia is derived from two primary sources of Islamic law: the precepts set forth in the Quran, and the example set by the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the Sunnah. Fiqh jurisprudence interprets and extends the application of sharia to...
governing was introduced in Dagestan. - 2 August, — first clashes in Tsumadinsky DistrictTsumadinsky DistrictTsumadinsky District is an administrative and a municipal district , one of the forty-one in the Republic of Dagestan, Russia. The area of the district is . Its administrative center is the rural locality of Agvali. District's population: 20,632 ; Population of Agvali accounts for 9.8% of the...
of Dagestan between local Wahhabis and militia moved from MakhachkalaMakhachkala-Twin towns/sister cities:Makhachkala is twinned with: Sfax, Tunisia Siping, China Spokane, United States Vladikavkaz, Russia Yalova, Turkey Ndola, Zambia-See also:*...
. - 7 August, — massive intrusion into Dagestan from Chechnya by Chechen militants under the command of deputy commander in chief of Chechen Republic of IchkeriaChechen Republic of IchkeriaThe Chechen Republic of Ichkeria is the unrecognized secessionist government of Chechnya. The republic was proclaimed in late 1991 by Dzokhar Dudayev, and fought two devastating wars between separatists and the Russian Federation which denounced secession...
Basayev and field commander Khattab (400 people). - 9 August, — heads of Shura of Muslims of Chechnya and Dagestan Shamil BasayevShamil BasayevShamil Salmanovich Basayev was a Chechen militant Islamist and a leader of the Chechen rebel movement.Starting as a field commander in the Transcaucasus, Basayev led guerrilla campaigns against the Russian troops for years, as well as launching mass-hostage takings of civilians, with his goal...
, Dokku Umarov, Khattab, Adallo Mukhammed declared establishment of an independent Islamic state of Dagestan, which included settlements in Tsumadinsky and Botlikhsky districts captured by militants. An unofficial television studio started operating in Chechnya and broadcasting video recordings of events in Tsumadinsky and BotlikhskyBotlikhsky DistrictBotlikhsky District is an administrative and a municipal district , one of the forty-one in the Republic of Dagestan, Russia. The area of the district is . Its administrative center is the rural locality of Botlikh. District's population: 50,469 ; Population of Botlikh accounts for 20.6% of the...
Districts, calls to jihadJihadJihad , an Islamic term, is a religious duty of Muslims. In Arabic, the word jihād translates as a noun meaning "struggle". Jihad appears 41 times in the Quran and frequently in the idiomatic expression "striving in the way of God ". A person engaged in jihad is called a mujahid; the plural is...
and other kind of Wahhabi propaganda on Khasaviurtovsky District and Kizilyurtovsky DistrictKizilyurtovsky DistrictKizilyurtovsky District is an administrative and a municipal district , one of the forty-one in the Republic of Dagestan, Russia. The area of the district is . Its administrative center is the town of Kizilyurt . District's population: 70,440 ;...
of Dagestan. - 9 August, — Sergey Stepashin was dismissed from the position of the chairman of the Russian GovernmentPrime Minister of RussiaThe Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation The use of the term "Prime Minister" is strictly informal and is not allowed for by the Russian Constitution and other laws....
, and Vladimir PutinVladimir PutinVladimir Vladimirovich Putin served as the second President of the Russian Federation and is the current Prime Minister of Russia, as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when...
was appointed instead of him. - 10 August, — President of CRIChechen Republic of IchkeriaThe Chechen Republic of Ichkeria is the unrecognized secessionist government of Chechnya. The republic was proclaimed in late 1991 by Dzokhar Dudayev, and fought two devastating wars between separatists and the Russian Federation which denounced secession...
Aslan MaskhadovAslan MaskhadovAslan Aliyevich Maskhadov was a leader of the Chechen separatist movement and the third President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.He was credited by many with the Chechen victory in the First Chechen War, which allowed for the...
claimed that only Dagestani are fighting in Dagestan and citizens of Chechnya do not participate in the offensive, "although several misguided ones can be there". Replying to the question about his attitude towards the "Declaration of Independence of Dagestan" approved by the Islamic Shura of Dagestan Maskhavod claimed that it's a purely internal affair of Russia and Dagestan that Chechnya had no relation to. He failed to explain participation of citizens of the Chechen Republic Shamil BasayevShamil BasayevShamil Salmanovich Basayev was a Chechen militant Islamist and a leader of the Chechen rebel movement.Starting as a field commander in the Transcaucasus, Basayev led guerrilla campaigns against the Russian troops for years, as well as launching mass-hostage takings of civilians, with his goal...
, his brother Shirvani, Khattab, Khunker Israpilov and other Chechen field commanders in military actions in Dagestan. - 12 August, — deputy head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia I. Zubov stated that a letter with a proposal to perform a joint operation with Federal troops against islamists in Dagestan was sent to the President of CRIChechen Republic of IchkeriaThe Chechen Republic of Ichkeria is the unrecognized secessionist government of Chechnya. The republic was proclaimed in late 1991 by Dzokhar Dudayev, and fought two devastating wars between separatists and the Russian Federation which denounced secession...
Maskhadov. Zubov also proposed Maskhadov to "solve the problem of liquidating bases, places for stogare and resort of unlawful militant formations, that the Chechen leadership refused to have anything to do with." - 14 August, — former president of CRI Yandarbiyev, a head of the union "Caucasian Confederation" and of the Organization of Islamic Unity of Caucasus claimed that "events that are currently developed in Dagestan may become the major and decisive stage on the way to liberate the Caucasus". He called Muslims of Caucasus to support the "jihad of Dagestan", claiming that "there will be no mercy for those who will not acknowledge their mistakes and won't take an active position on the side of Muslims".
- 16 August, — speaking on a rally in Grozny Aslan MaskhadovAslan MaskhadovAslan Aliyevich Maskhadov was a leader of the Chechen separatist movement and the third President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.He was credited by many with the Chechen victory in the First Chechen War, which allowed for the...
blamed Russia's leadership of destabilizing situation in Dagestan. According to him, the conflict in Dagestan is developed according to the "plot of Moscow", which is looking for a pretext for military (enforced) pressure against Chechnya. Maskhadov declared a state of military emergency in Chechnya for a term of 30 days, and announced partial mobilization of reservists and participants of the First Chechen WarFirst Chechen WarThe First Chechen War, also known as the War in Chechnya, was a conflict between the Russian Federation and the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, fought from December 1994 to August 1996...
. - 16–24 August, — denizens of several settlements in Naursky and Shelkovskoy DistrictShelkovskoy DistrictShelkovskoy District is an administrative and municipal district , one of the fifteen in the Chechen Republic, Russia. Its administrative center is the rural locality of Shelkovskaya. District's population: 50,233 ; Population of Shelkovskaya accounts for 19.1% of the district's population....
s of Chechnya performed rallies with a claim addressed to the leadership of Ichkeria to "disentangle itself from activities of extremists and to use force to expel them from the Chechen land". - 18 August, — a meeting of field commanders and participants of the First Chechen warFirst Chechen WarThe First Chechen War, also known as the War in Chechnya, was a conflict between the Russian Federation and the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, fought from December 1994 to August 1996...
took place in Grozny, with participation of Maskhadov, Yandarbiyev, Basayav and other figures in Ichkeria. Basayev addressed the assemblage with an appeal to support the "war for faith" in Dagestan. The majority of field commanders while abstaining from taking part in military actions in Botlikhskiy District, yet provided aid with ammunition, medication and transportation. - August 24, — pressurized by Russia's troops, squads of Chechen militants are forced to retreat to Chechnya.
- August 25, — bases of militants in Chechnya were bombed by Russian aviation. The command of Federal forces claims that it "reserves the right to bomb bases of militants at the land of any region in the North Caucasus including Chechnya".
- August 29, — Federal forces started the operation against KaramakhiKaramakhiKaramakhi is a rural locality in Buynaksky District of the Republic of Dagestan, Russia.-Overview:In 1997-1999, Karamakhi became a hotbed of radical islamism...
and Chabanmakhi (Bujnakskiy District of Dagastan), which were controlled by Wahhabis who claimed Sharia government there yet in August 1998. A. Maskhadov with his decree called off M. UdugovMovladi UdugovMovladi Saidarbievich Udugov was the First Deputy Prime Minister of the separatist Chechen Republic of Ichkeria...
's membership in the Security Council of CRIChechen Republic of IchkeriaThe Chechen Republic of Ichkeria is the unrecognized secessionist government of Chechnya. The republic was proclaimed in late 1991 by Dzokhar Dudayev, and fought two devastating wars between separatists and the Russian Federation which denounced secession...
because in his opinion Udugov "turned out to be a partisan of the mass scale ideological diversion against the Chechen Government" and "put brotherly relationships with Dagestan at risk of a break" with his support of the invasion to Dagestan. - August 31, — explosion in Moscow in a shopping centre Okhotny Ryad.
To be completed...
See also
- "Vladimir Putin's Dark Rise to Power" controversy