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1999 Russian apartment bombings

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Russian apartment bombings
LocationRussia
(Buynaksk-Moscow-Volgodonsk)
DateSeptember 4-16, 1999
TargetLow-income apartment buildings
Attack typeTime bombing
DeathsNearly 300
InjuredMore than 1,000

The Russian apartment bombings were a series of bombings in Russia that killed nearly 300 people and, together with the Dagestan War, led the country into the Second Chechen War.

The bombings

Moscow mall

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

Buynaksk

On September 4, 1999, a car bomb detonated outside an apartment building housing Russian soldiers and their families in the city of Buynaksk, in the Republic of Dagestan. Sixty-four people were killed and 133 were wounded . Russia blamed separatists from Chechnya, who days later invaded the Republic of Dagestan.

Bombing in Moscow

Moscow, Pechatniki

On September 8, 1999, 300 to 400 kg of explosives detonated on the ground floor of an apartment building in south-east Moscow. The nine-story building was destroyed, killing 94 people inside and wounding 249 others. A total of 108 apartments were destroyed during the bombing. The information about responsibility claims is controversial. An anonymous caller to a Russian news agency said the blast was a response to recent the Russian bombing of Chechen and Dagestan villages No one claimed responsibility according to a later publication .

The owner of a Guryanov St. basement warehouse in Moscow, Mark Blumenfeld, said the composite sketch of the man who rented his basement was later replaced with a different sketch. Mr. Blumenfeld pointed out that the inquest pressured him at Lefortovo to testify against Gochiyaev, the man identified by the latter sketch.

Moscow, Kashirskoye highway

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

It was at this time that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin declared a war against "illegal military units" in Chechnya. Though there was little evidence pointing to Chechens, preparations were made by Russian military forces to re-enter the province and to strip the Chechen leaders of their powers.

Volgodonsk

The decision was given further impetus when a truck bomb exploded on September 16, 1999, outside a nine-story apartment complex in the southern Russian city of Volgodonsk, killing 17 people.

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

Ryazan incident

File:Ryazan-report-on-prevented-explosion--interior-minister.png
Interior minister Vladimir Rushailo reports on a diverted apartment bombing attack in Ryazan. 24 September 1999. Putin would give the same explanation some time later.

On the evening of September 22, 1999, an alert resident of an apartment building in the town of Ryazan noticed two suspicious men who carried sacks into the basement from a car with a Moscow license plate. When police arrived, the car with people was gone.

The cops found three hundred-pound sacks of white powder in the basement. A detonator and a timing device were attached and turned on. The timer was set for 5:30 in the morning . Yuri Tkachenko, the head of the local bomb squad, disconnected a detonator and a bomb timing device and tested three sacks of white substance with a gas analyzer MO-2. The substance was identified as hexogen (RDX), military explosive used in all previous bombings.

Police and rescue vehicles converged from different parts of the city, and 30,000 residents have been evacuated from the area. 1,200 local police officers with automatic weapons set up roadblocks on highways around the city and started patrolling railroad stations and airports to hunt the terrorists down. In the morning, "Ryazan resembled a city under siege". Composite sketches of two man and a women terrorist suspects were sent to two thousand policeman and shown on TV.

At 8 a.m. September 23 Russian television networks reported the attempt to blow up a building in Ryazan using hexogen. The minister of internal affairs Vladimir Rushailo announced that police prevented a terrorist act. Later in the evening Vladimir Putin praised the vigilance of the Ryzanians and called for the air bombing of Grozny..

In the evening of September 23, the perpetrators were caught. A telephone service employee tapped into a long distance phone conversations managed to detect a talk in which an out-of-town person suggested to "split up" and "make your own way out". That person's number was found to belong to an FSB office in Moscow. When arrested, the detainees produced FSB identification cards. They soon have been released on orders from Moscow. The names and further fate of three FSB agents who conducted this operation remained unknown as of 2007.

Next morning FSB director Nikolai Patrushev declared that the incident was a training exercise.

On March 23 2000, a few days before the Putin's election, Igor Malashkevich, the president of NTV Russia was going to broadcast "The Sugar of Ryazan" movie about the events. He was warned that NTV "should consider themselves finished" if they will go ahead with the broadcast. The warning allegedly came from Vladimir Putin and was brought by Valentin Yumashev, son-in-law of Boris Yeltsin

Explosives controversy

File:Ryazan-report-on-training--fsb-director.png
FSB director Nikolai Patrushev reports on an emergency readiness exercise in Ryazan. 24 September 1999, 30 minutes after Rushailo's report.

Yuri Tkachenko, the police explosives expert who defused the Ryazan bomb insisted that it was real, contrary to the statements of FSB officials. Tkachenko said that the explosives, including a timer, 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 hexogen. Tkachenko said that it was out of the question that the analyzer could have malfunctioned, as the gas analyzer was of world class quality, costing $20,000 and was maintained by a specialist who worked according to a strict schedule, checking the analyzer after each use and making frequent prophylactic checks. Tkachenko pointed out that meticulous care in the handling of the gas analyzer was a necessity because the lives of the bomb squad experts depended on the reliability of their equipment. The police officers who answered the original call and discovered the bomb also insisted that the incident was not an exercise and that it was obvious from its appearance that the substance in the bomb was not sugar.

In 2002 deputy of Russian Parliament Aleksandr Kulikov asked the General Prosecutor's Office about its investigation of apartment bombings in Moscow, Volgodonsk and discovering of explosive devices in Ryazan. The answer of Russian Deputy Prosecutor Vasiliy Kolmogorov was then published in Russian media. According to the answer, express analysys of the discovered substance made by detectors "Exprei" и "М-02" showed controversial results. To rectify the controversy, three samples were taken from the sacks and blown up at the testing area. In all cases no explosion followed. The additional investigation ordered by the General Prosecutor's Office found the following.

"The sacks contained sucrose which is a disaccharide based on glucopyranose and fructofuranose. No traces of detonating materials (trotyl, hexogen, octogen, PETN, nitroglycerin, tetryl, picric acid) were found in the examined substance. Investigation of the clock, the elements of power supply, the shell, the bulb and the wires showed that although these items constituted a single electronic block, it is not capable of giving voltage on triggering the timer and it is not a detonating device. The mission in Ryazan was planned and carried out improperly, in particular the issue of limits of carrying out this action was not regulated, no provision was made to inform representatives of local government and enforcement bodies about the training character of the implant in case it was discovered."

Official investigation

The official investigation was concluded only 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 Amir Khattab and Abu Umar, Arab militants fighting in Chechnya on the side of Chechen insurgents. Both of them 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

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

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

Suspects

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

Moscow bombings

Volgodonsk bombing

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

Buinaksk bombing

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

Attempts at independent investigation

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

An independent public commission to investigate the bombings chaired by Duma deputy Sergei Kovalev, a well known opposer of the Chechen wars, decorated with the "order of Honor" from Dudayev himself, was rendered ineffective because of government refusal to respond to its inquiries. Two key members of the Kovalev Commission, Sergei Yushenkov and Yuri Shchekochikhin, both Duma members,and widely linked with Berezovsky have since died in apparent assassinations in April 2003 and July 2003 respectively. The Commission's lawyer Mikhail Trepashkin, mostly known for his participation in the interview besides Berezovsky and Litvinenko who was confessing to be advised to assassinate Berezovski has been arrested in October 2003. Another member of the commission, Otto Lacis, was assaulted in November 2003 and two years later on November 3 2005 died in hospital after a car accident.

The investigation of the bombings was rendered ineffective because of the government stonewalling. Many people who tried to investigate the events, including Alexander Litvinenko and Russian Duma members Sergei Yushenkov and Yuri Shchekochikhin, have been assassinated or died under suspicious circumstances.

Theory of FSB involvement

The bombings happened over a span of two weeks in 1999 and stopped when three FSB agents were caught by the local police while planting a large bomb in an apartment block in the city of Ryazan.

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

The FSB were caught by local police and citizens in the city of Ryazan planting a bomb with a detonator in the basement of an apartment building at the address of 14/16 Novosyelov on the night of September 22, 1999. Explosives experts arriving at the scene found that the bomb tested positive for hexogen. An NTV news report aired at 4pm September 23 said explosives were not found in the examined bags. On September 24, 1999, Nikolai Patrushev, the head of the FSB, said on the NTV channel that the bomb in the basement of the apartment was a dummy and that the FSB had been conducting a test. The FSB officially stated that the gas analyzer that detected hexogen had malfunctioned, and that the substance in the dummy bomb was sugar.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The public inquiry commission asked Mikhail Trepashkin, another former FSB-agent linked with Berezovsky to investigate claims of the message supposedly authored by Gochiyaev. Trepashkin was arrested on unrelated charges of "disclosing state secrets" shortly before he was to make his findings public as part of his lawyer work with sisters Morozovs. 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. Trepashkin was convicted by a military closed court to four years. Romanovich subsequently died in a hit and run accident in Cyprus.

Amnesty International issued a concern that "there are serious grounds to believe that Mikhail Trepashkin was arrested and convicted under falsified criminal charges which may be politically-motivated, in order to prevent him continuing his investigative and legal work related to the 1999 apartment bombings in Moscow and other cities".

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

Johns Hopkins University and Hoover Institute scholar David Satter published a book which included a chapter with evidence against FSB in the successful and attempted bombings of the Fall 1999. During his testimony in the United States House of Representatives Satter said,

"With Yeltsin and his family facing possible criminal prosecution, however, a plan was put into motion to put in place a successor who would guarantee that Yeltsin and his family would be safe from prosecution and the criminal division of property in the country would not be subject to reexamination. For “Operation Successor” to succeed, however, it was necessary to have a massive provocation. In my view, this provocation was the bombing in September, 1999 of the apartment building bombings in Moscow, Buinaksk, and Volgodonsk. In the aftermath of these attacks, which claimed 300 lives, a new war was launched against Chechnya. Putin, the newly appointed prime minister who was put in charge of that war, achieved overnight popularity. Yeltsin resigned early. Putin was elected president and his first act was to guarantee Yeltsin immunity from prosecution."

U.S. Senator and presidential candidate John McCain said that there remained "credible allegations that Russia's FSB had a hand in carrying out these attacks". McCain has stated that "Mr. Putin's government is a continuation of 400 years of autocratic state control, and repression" and said that Russia should be kicked out of the G8.

Alexander Goldfarb and Marina Litvinenko, Alexander Litvinenko's widow, wrote in their book Death of a Dissident that Litvineko murder was "the most compelling proof" of the FSB involvement theory. According to the book, the murder of Litvineko by Russian agents "gave credence to all his previous theories, delivering justice for the tenants of the bombed apartment blocks, the Moscow theater-goers, Yushenkov, Shchekochikhin, and Anna Politkovskaya, and the half-exterminated nation of Chechnya, exposing their killers for the whole world to see."

Criticism of the FSB involvement theory

The involvement of the Russian government in the apartment bombings has been described as a "conspiracy theory" with its share of grounds and doubts. In a May 2000 issue of The Washington Post Paul J. Saunders wrote that Putin's willing to shut down Novaya Gazeta could be understood because "most dismiss the involvement of the Russian government in the apartment bombings as an unsupported conspiracy theory though it has received widespread attention".

According to Russia's official investigation Chechen separatists were responsible for the bombings. The FSB said the Ryazan bomb was a dummy, planted by security officers as part of a secret civil defense drill, the sacks being filled with sugar. The purpose of the terrorist acts was to distract attention of Russian authorities from the battles in Dagestan between the federal forces and Chechen separatists headed by Shamil Basayev and Arabian Khattab. Basayev and Khattab invaded the neighboring Russian republic of Dagestan on August 7 1999 in support of the Islamic Shura of Dagestan separatist rebels. The bombings and the invasion prompted Russian authorities to break the Khasav-Yurt Accord, even though the invasion was opposed by Aslan Maskhadov.

Vanora Bennett found the conspiracy theory "exotic for anyone from the comparatively gentle streets of London".

Olga Nedbayeva frequently referred to the FSB theory as a "conspiracy theory" and quoted an FSB spokesman saying that "Litvinenko's evidence cannot be taken seriously by those who are investigating the bombings".

Almost all the of the critics of the FSB theory, and the "independent investigation” have been directly linked with Boris Berezovsky, an outspoken critic of the administration of Vladimir Putin and allied in London with former Chechen rebel, Ahmed Zakayev. Berezovsky said he was on a mission to oust Putin's government "by force", which prompted shark rebukes from the British government. Russia has issued multiple warrants for Berezovsky's arrest and has repeatedly demanded that the U.K. extradite him, calls which have been ignored.

Two key members of the Kovalev Commission, Sergei Yushenkov and Yuri Shchekochikhin, both Duma members, have been widely linked with Berezovsky The public inquiry commission asked Mikhail Trepashkin,another former FSB-agent linked with Berezovsky Yuri Felshtinsky- another confidant of Berezovsky Sergei Kovalev, a well known opposer of the Chechen wars was decorated with the "order of Honor" from Dzhokhar Dudayev, the first President of the Chechen breakaway republic of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.. Alexander Litvinenko worked for Boris Berezovsky and bought a house for him. The Commission's lawyer Mikhail Trepashkin is mostly known for his participation in the interview beside Berezovsky and Litvinenko when Litvinenko claimed he was advised to assassinate Berezovsky.

A summary of a conference at Princeton 3-4 March 2000 referred to the FSB involvement theory as a "conspiracy theory" and said there was no evidence (at the time) supporting either the official or the opposing theory.

Head of Russia's National Civic Council of International Affairs Sergei Markov criticized the film "Assassination of Russia" which supported the FSB involvement theory and was made with the help of Boris Berezovsky. 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 with a conspiracy theory that the United States and/or Israel organized the 9/11 attacks in order to justify military actions.

Paul Starobin opined that "Assassination of Russia" offered "no hard proof".

In his book Inside Putin's Russia Andrew Jack mentions several aspects in favour and against the conspiracy theory. The counter-arguments included the following.

  • Kremlin hardliners would take "considerable risks" of a wide-range Muslim insurgency had they planned Basayev's incursion to Dagestan.
  • The Ryazan incident might have been an attempt by FSB to claim success in discovering another bomb. This would boost FSB's budget, reputation and power grip.
  • An information leak on the alleged conspiracy would be used by a competing clan. Quoting Yegor Gaidar, "if there was a plot, the information would have leaked out and been used by Yeltsin's enemies".
  • High loss of life in three month fighting following the bombings could damage chances of the pro-government party in December elections and those of Putin in subsequent presidential elections. Jack quotes an anonymous "very senior official" as saying, "if the FSB did blow up apartments, it was not to make Putin president. War was an enormous threat to the elections".
  • Jack notes little credibility in Russian media reports on "conspiracies" at the time. Confirming any fact in Russia and, especially, in Chechnya was difficult, in his opinion.
  • An expert on Dagestan Robert Bruce Ware believed the Wahhabis were the most likely culprits.
  • Jack personally met Berezovsky in exile when the latter said, according to the author, that he had no information on the alleged FSB plot. The author concluded that Berezovsky "failed to produce any significant proof" of the plot in his further investigation.

GRU agent Aleksey Galkin denied his earlier statements because he was pressured by his Chechen captors.

Chronology of events

See also

External links

References

  1. ^ Alex Goldfarb, with Marina Litvinenko Death of a Dissident: The Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the Return of the KGB, The Free Press, 2007, ISBN 1-416-55165-4
  3. Фоторобот не первой свежестиTemplate:Ru icon, Igor Korolkov, Moscow News, N 44, November 11, 2003. Computer translation.
  4. ^ David Satter. Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State. Yale University Press. 2003. ISBN 0-300-09892-8.
  5. "Death of a dissident", page 196
  6. Williams, Bryan Glyn (2001). The Russo-Chechen War: A Threat to Stability in the Middle East and Eurasia?. Middle East Policy 8.1.
  7. "Death of a dissident", page 198
  8. ^ " The Shadow of Ryazan: Is Putin's government legitimate?", David Satter, National Review, April 30, 2002.
  9. ^ Answer of the General Prosecutor's office on the deputy request (on explosions in Moscow)
  10. ^ Only one explosions suspect still free, Kommersant, December 10, 2002.
  11. ^ Results of the investigation of explosions in Moscow and Volgodonsk and an incident in Ryazan.Template:Ru icon The answer of the Russian state Prosecutor office to the inquiry of Gosduma member A. Kulikov, circa March 2002. computer translation
  12. Gochiyayev's wanted page on FSB web site.
  13. Karachayev terrorists found in the morgue, Kommersant, June 8, 2004.
  14. ^ Two life sentences for 246 murders, Kommersant, January 13, 2004.
  15. A terrorist has imprisoned a policeman, Kommersant, May 15, 2003.
  16. ^ Buinaksk terrorists sentenced to life, Kommersant, March 20, 2001.
  17. Jury acquitted a Buinaksk suspect, Lenta.Ru, 2006 Jan 24.
  18. Jury acquitted a Buinaksk suspect again, Lenta.Ru, 2006 November 13.
  19. Khattab said: Your task is small, Kommersant, November 13, 2006.
  20. They should be blown up, not put on trial, Kommersant, April 10, 2002.
  21. Duma Rejects Move to Probe Ryazan Apartment Bomb, by Yevgenia Borisova. 21 March 2000.
  22. Duma Vote Kills Query On Ryazan, The Moscow Times, 4 April 2000.
  23. http://www.niiss.ru/d_kovalev.shtml
  24. ^ Putin critic loses post, platform for inquiry, Douglas Birch. The Baltimore Sun, 11 December 2003.
  25. ^ Russian court rejects action over controversial "anti-terrorist exercise". BBC Monitoring. 3 April 2003. Source: Interfax news agency, Moscow.
  26. http://www.izvestia.ru/investigation/article3102993/
  27. ^ Chronology of events. State Duma Deputy Yushenkov shot dead. Centre for Russian Studies. Norway. 17 April 2003.
  28. ^ Worries Linger as Schekochikhin's Laid to Rest. By Oksana Yablokova. The Moscow Times. 7 July 2003.
  29. Otto Lacis brutally beaten in Moscow. NewsRU. 11 November 2003. computer translation
  30. A prominent Russian journalist Otto Lacis diedTemplate:Ru icon
  31. Take care Tony, that man has blood on his hands; Evidence shows secret police were behind 'terrorist' bomb, The Guardian.
  32. ^ Secret at the heart of Putin's rise to power, 13/03/2004, The Telegraph
  33. Ryazan sugar does not contain hexogen
  34. ^ The first voluntary interview of Alexey Galkin, comments by journalist Roman Shleinov and conclusion of psychologist Michail Istomin Novaya Gazeta N 89, December 2, 2002.
  35. "Our group prepared diversions in Chechnya and Dagestan", Testimony of Senior Lieutenant Alexei Galkin, November 1999.
  36. Our group prepared diversions in Chechnya and Dagestan. Testimony of senior lieutenant Alexey Galkin, Novaya Gazeta N 89, December 2, 2002
  37. The Operation "Successor"Template:Ru icon by Vladimir Pribylovsky and Yuriy Felshtinsky.
  38. Robert Young Pelton Three Worlds Gone Mad: Dangerous Journeys through the War Zones of Africa, Asia, and the South Pacific, The Lyons Press; (2003), ISBN 1-592-28100-1
  39. Britain's Observer newspaper suggests Russian secret service involvement in Moscow bombings, By Julie Hyland 15 March 2000
  40. Johann Hari. "Conspiracy theories: a guide". New Statesman. Retrieved 2008-01-28.
  41. ФСБ взрывает Россию. ФСБ против народаTemplate:Ru icon, Alexander Litvinenko, Yuri Felshtinsky, Novaya Gazeta, August 27, 2001. Computer translation.
  42. http://www.newsru.com/world/06feb2007/litv.html
  43. http://www.izvestia.ru/investigation/article3102993/
  44. Russian editor questioned over seizure of controversial book
  45. Chechnya Film Festival
  46. HAUNTING YUSHENKOV LECTURE BROADCAST
  47. CDI
  48. NewsRu.com: "Gennadiy Seleznyov was warned of the Volgodonsk explosion three days in advance"Template:Ru icon
  49. Reply of the Public Prosecutor Office of the Russian Federation to a deputy inquiryTemplate:Ru icon.
  50. Disbelief. The record in IMDb.
  51. Google Video
  52. Screening Horror; A new film seeks the truth behind the 1999 bombings., The Moscow Times]
  53. http://www.gazeta.ru/2006/03/17/oa_192467.shtml
  54. For Trepashkin, Bomb Trail Leads to Jail
  55. http://coranet.radicalparty.org/pressreview/print_right.php?func=detail&par=10113
  56. Russian Federation: Amnesty International calls for Mikhail Trepashkin to be released pending a full review of his case
  57. computer translation
  58. computer translation
  59. computer translation
  60. Satter House Testimony, 2007.
  61. McCain Decries, November 4, 2003, Friends of John McCain.
  62. http://www.hrvc.net/articles/mccaine.html
  63. Alex Goldfarb and Marina Litvinenko. Death of a Dissident: The Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the Return of the KGB, The Free Press (2007) ISBN 1-416-55165-4
  64. Johann Hari. "Conspiracy theories: a guide". New Statesman. Retrieved 2008-01-28.
  65. Steven Lee Myers. "The New York Times". Retrieved 2008-01-28.
  66. Paul J. Saunders (2000-05-09). "Russian Villain or Hero?". The Washington Times. Retrieved 2008-01-29.
  67. "From Russia with secrets". Times Online. May 13, 2007. Retrieved 2007-12-17. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  68. Olga Nedbayeva. "Conspiracy theories on Russia's 1999 bombings gain ground". Agence France-Presse.
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