Picket for Mikhail Trepashkin

On December 15 at 11:00 at the building of the Moscow District Military Court (Moscow, Stary Arbat, 37), the Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoner Mikhail Trepashkin is holding a picket in his defense.

Information about the case of Mikhail Ivanovich Trepashkin can be obtained on the websites trepashkin.narod.ru and kolokol.ru or by phone: Gorokhov N.V. 352-80-77, 8-916-981-80-09.

Mikhail Trepashkin and the Apartment Bombings

Statement of the Moscow Group for the Investigation of the Events of September 1999

• Mikhail Ivanovich Trepashkin, a former FSB investigator and now a lawyer, was detained on October 22 — one week before the start of hearings in the Moscow City Court regarding the apartment bombings.
• The issue of his arrest on charges of a serious crime — disclosure of state secrets — had been considered by the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office since the spring. However, he was arrested on a different charge — possession of a pistol. We are convinced that this charge is falsified and that Trepashkin's arrest is specifically connected to the bombings case.
• We are aware of five cases of obvious planting of weapons on Chechens and Ingush known to us.
  • In two of them, people were sentenced to 3 years but released after a year.
  • In the other three, criminal cases were not even initiated — neither against the detainees nor regarding the discovery of the weapons.
• Another Ingush man, allegedly with traces of hexogen on his hands, was held in prison for 3 months, subjected to physical and moral torture. They are attempting to charge Trepashkin himself with illegal possession of weapons for the fourth time already.

It was only thanks to Trepashkin that the investigation of the bombings became an actual investigation, rather than just reading others' publications. Mikhail pointed out a methodology that made it possible to search for witnesses. He presented the first pieces of information he found himself to all three groups investigating the events: Felshtinsky, Kovalev, and us. Subsequently, using his methodology, our group and Yuri Felshtinsky obtained results that are, in our view, very important.

We declare that compelling evidence has been found of FSB involvement in the organization of the apartment bombings.

1. An anonymous prediction originated from the FSB regarding the bombing of "three houses in residential areas of Moscow." Three houses were indeed mined: two were blown up, and one (on Borisovskie Prudy Street) was defused in time.
2. A connection has been found between the firm that helped register the firm of the main accused — Gochiyayev, and for which he was not an ordinary client, and a firm belonging to a major Moscow criminal group. Many authors, including the recently deceased Yuri Shchekochikhin, have written about the ties between this group and the FSB over various years.

These and other results were included in our group's report, which we sent to other research groups for coordination at the end of September (on 11.12.2003, the report was published on the internet at www.somnenie.narod.ru/bl/obzor2.html).
Mikhail Trepashkin initiated other lines of inquiry as well.

As the official defense counsel for one of the victims, Trepashkin was supposed to participate in the trial that began on October 31 in the Moscow City Court. He was denied preliminary access to the criminal case file on the grounds that the case being heard by the court had no relation to his client and concerned only Volgodonsk. However, it has now become known that the court is also considering the Moscow events and questioning witnesses from Moscow.

It is clear that Trepashkin's participation in the trial is dangerous for those who fear an objective investigation of the events. Among these people is the leadership of the FSB, at whose initiative Trepashkin is being persecuted by the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office and, we are certain, the Moscow Region police.

In order for the court's findings to be even slightly trustworthy, the trial must be open (terrorists and law enforcement agencies should not have JOINT secrets from the public), and a lawyer who has a legal right to do so and knows the circumstances of the events better than others must be allowed to participate. For this to happen, Mikhail Trepashkin must be released.

Lyudmila Evstifeeva, Evgeniy Frumkin