Russian Security Services Intercept Explosions and Ban Wahhabism

Explosions in Moscow and Russia

• Russian security services were preventing various explosions that were supposed to take place in Moscow, according to an FSB representative quoted yesterday by the ITAR-TASS agency.
• Police have discovered various time bomb mechanisms in the capital over the last few days, intended to explode on specific dates, up to September 21, said FSB representative Alexander Zdanovich.
• Commenting on the explosion that caused 14 deaths yesterday in a building in Volgodonsk, Zdanovich said that it was a premeditated act. "All these explosions across Russia are links in a single chain."
• Zdanovich added: "We are confronting international terrorists who have precise plans."

Dagestan Bans Wahhabist Movement

• Dagestan yesterday banned the Wahhabist movement (radical Islam), accused of being at the source of two bloody rebellions in the Caucasian republic, according to the ITAR-TASS agency.
• The parliament of Dagestan approved a law banning "any organization that identifies itself with Wahhabism, and any other extremist organization whose activity is aimed at changing the constitutional order through violence and threatens the security of the State."
• Wahhabists are accused by the authorities of organizing two insurgent expeditions into Dagestan in August and September to establish an "Islamic republic" there, independent of Moscow.
• Federal forces, Russian and Dagestani, have in recent days finished the second operation undertaken from Chechnya by Islamists led by the head of the Chechen war Shamil Basayev and "commandante" Khattab, a Jordanian who became one of the conduits of Wahhabism in the Caucasus.

Table: Bomb Attacks

An explosion destroyed a large apartment block in the Russian city of Volgodonsk, in the Southeast of the country, near the unstable Russian region of the North Caucasus. Authorities suspect Islamic activists—fighting for the Independence of Dagestan—of responsibility for the recent terrorist attacks that claimed more than 300 lives. Volgodonsk, 6 a.m.: a truck exploded near a house

1. Aug 31: A bomb in a deluxe commercial center located a few dozen meters from the Kremlin. One dead and 40 suffered damage.
2. Sep 4: A car equipped with the equivalent of 300 kg of TNT exploded near a house inhabited by families of Russian military personnel in Buynaksk (Dagestan). 94 people died.
3. Sep 9: The explosion of a house in southeast Moscow resulted in 94 deaths.
4. Sep 13: At least 116 people died in the destruction by explosion of a second house in Moscow.
5. Sep 16: A car with explosives exploded near an apartment block in Volgodonsk, killing at least seven people and wounding a hundred.

Sources: Reuters, BBC World.
[full translation]

Related Reports

• ibidem: "Circassia wants autonomy"
  • 24.09.99 Offensive: Russians bombed Grozny airport. Islamist rebels are jumping from Dagestan to Chechnya and vice versa. Russian federal troops are now trying to undertake a final assault
  • "Moscow defines as 'terrorists' the Islamist insurgents based in Chechnya, whom it accuses of being the source of a series of explosions in Russia (about 300 deaths since August 31) and of having organized two insurgent expeditions into the neighboring republic of Dagestan"
• ibidem:
  • Bomb deactivated in Ryazan.
  • The psychosis of bomber attacks is growing in various cities of Russia

The discovery of a bomb, ready to explode, in a building in Ryazan (in the middle of the night from Wednesday to Thursday) [Friday's newspaper], shows that Russia continues