INTERVIEW WITH A COMPOSITE SKETCH

Open letter to the Commission for the investigation of apartment building bombings in Moscow and Volgodonsk

Dear Commission!

By force of circumstances, we found ourselves accomplices to a crime that claimed the lives of nearly three hundred people. We are referring to the September 1999 terrorist attacks in Moscow and Volgodonsk.

Since then, we have been placed on federal and international wanted lists and are forced to hide from the law enforcement agencies of the Russian Federation.

After September 1999, the Russian special services made repeated attempts to arrest or eliminate us. Due to the statements recently made by us and Gochiyaev, these attempts have intensified lately. It seems that in the near future, we will indeed face detention or death.

These are the reasons why we want to address you with this open letter right now.

1. We admit to being accomplices in the terrorist acts that took place in Moscow and Volgodonsk in September 1999.

   • We declare that neither Khattab, nor Basaev, nor any of the Chechen field commanders and political leaders, nor any Chechens at all had anything to do with the September 1999 terrorist attacks. They did not order, finance, or organize these attacks.
   • We met Khattab and some field commanders for the first time only after we fled to Chechnya from the pursuit of Russian law enforcement agencies after the attacks.

2. We are accomplices in the terrorist attacks at the lowest execution level, and we have no connection to the explosions themselves. We were only involved in the transportation of sacks, which we believed contained explosives for their temporary storage and subsequent use for blowing up administrative buildings of the special services and the military, not residential buildings.

   • We did not anticipate that the explosions would occur at the storage sites of the sacks, in the basements of residential buildings. The time of the terrorist attacks was not known to us.
   • Upon learning of these explosions, we fled to Chechnya.

3. Not being Chechens by nationality, we were sincere supporters of the Chechen people's struggle for independence. It was these views of ours that allowed those who were actually behind the organization and implementation of the terrorist attacks in Moscow and Volgodonsk in September 1999 to recruit us to participate in the organization of the attacks. Today we understand that we were used "blindly," that in 1999 we did not understand who our bosses actually were and for whom we were actually working.

   • Today we understand and know this. It took almost three years to realize what happened, to gather information and evidence about who was actually standing behind our backs.
   • Many of those who participated in the September 1999 operation in Moscow, Volgodonsk, Ryazan, and Dagestan are no longer alive. While we are alive, we want everyone to know the main thing. According to the information we have gathered, obtained from various participants in operations at different levels, the customer of the bombing operation in Russia in September 1999 is the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation. In this connection, the name of the FSB Director Nikolai Platonovich Patrushev was repeatedly and precisely mentioned.
   • The curator of the entire bombing program was German Ugryumov, who was subsequently liquidated, according to our information, by the FSB itself. The total number of group members was, according to our information, more than thirty people. As middle-level leaders, we know only two:
     • A lieutenant colonel, Tatar by nationality, nickname (pseudonym) Abubakar.
     • A colonel, Russian by nationality, pseudonym Abdulgafur.
   • We assume that Abdulgafur and the well-known Russian special services officer Max Lazovsky are one and the same person.

4. We turned out to be part of the tragedy of the Chechen and Russian peoples. We ask for forgiveness from those to whom we brought grief in September 1999. We also ask for forgiveness from the Chechen people for being used "blindly" by the FSB to start the Second Chechen War. We do not ask for leniency for ourselves and will devote the rest of our lives to the struggle for the independence of the Chechen people.

Krymshamkhalov Yusuf Ibragimovich, Karachay, born November 16, 1966.
[Signature]
Batchaev Timur Amurovich, Karachay, born June 27, 1978.
[Signature]

July 28, 2002.

INSTEAD OF A COMMENT

Upon reading, there are more questions than answers. For instance, isn't the document composed too articulately for such young and poorly educated people?