KAVKAZSKY VESTNIK

TASHKENTA

How a terrorist accomplice was wounded, a British banker released, and a mediator killed

Mark Ulensh

Yusuf Krymshamkhalov is one of two people sentenced to life imprisonment in case No. 103. This massive case covers several events of September 1999 which, according to investigators, are interconnected:
* The bombings of two houses in Moscow and one in Volgodonsk.
* The mining of another house in Moscow.

It is possible that the bombing of a military dormitory in Buynaksk is also included in this case.

The Moscow part of these events cannot be considered investigated to this day. Not a single one of the four accused in this episode, whose photographs and names are posted on the FSB website, has been found, not to mention the "unidentified persons" who repeatedly appear in the investigation and court documents.

The Volgodonsk bombing, however, has been fully investigated. The case against the two detainees — Yusuf Krymshamkhalov and Adam Dekkushev — was separated into a separate proceeding. Some unclear points remain in it, which in principle could provide a completely different version of events, but the version under which Krymshamkhalov and Dekkushev were sentenced to life imprisonment looks very convincing. The third participant in the mining, Timur Batchaev, was killed in 2002 — at the same time Krymshamkhalov was captured. The circumstances of the killing of several people traveling in an "Opel" from the Pankisi Gorge of Georgia to Azerbaijan remain extremely unclear, but this is a topic for a separate analysis. We will only note that of the many figures in the case who, according to FSB reports, died in various "clashes" in subsequent years, Timur Batchaev is the only one whose body was identified and buried.

Krymshamkhalov was not even wounded during his capture. In a photograph taken by the Chekists during an interrogation in Lefortovo, we see a large abrasion on his nose; his defender, lawyer Arifulov, explains: during the capture, Yusuf was treated harshly by Georgian special forces, but neither Yusuf nor his lawyer have any complaints against the Russian security forces.

Regarding his injuries sustained long before the arrest, Krymshamkhalov himself said during interrogation: "In Serzhen-Yurt, during the shelling of the camp, I received a through-and-through shrapnel wound to the soft tissues of the upper third of the left shoulder, and then in the Pankisi Gorge of Georgia in November 2002, due to careless handling of an assault rifle, I received a through-and-through wound to the left foot. <...> I want to note that these injuries were sustained by me outside of a clash with federal troops."