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?

HEXOGEN TRAIL

INVESTIGATION

"Novaya Gazeta" continues its journalistic investigation into the circumstances of the terrorist attacks in Moscow, Volgodonsk, and Buynaksk, which claimed the lives of hundreds of people in 1999.

Based on the results of previous publications concerning, in particular, the FSB "exercises" in Ryazan, we asked many questions of our special services, most of which remain unanswered.

In these three years, much has happened: another war in Chechnya, a series of terrorist attacks in Dagestan, the hostage-taking at Dubrovka; the exiled oligarch Berezovsky began conducting his own investigation and enlisted former FSB officer Litvinenko for this purpose. A State Duma deputy commission has been created and is active.

There are many versions. Even more propaganda and counter-propaganda comments, from all sides. There is a lack of facts.

Strange materials have reached the editorial office of "Novaya Gazeta." A video recording of the testimony of GRU Senior Lieutenant Alexei Galkin, in which he admitted the involvement of special services in the terrorist attacks; a statement by the terrorists whose composite sketches can still be seen on the streets of Moscow — Krymshamkhalov and Batchaev — in which they admit their involvement in the apartment bombings.

A week ago ("Novaya Gazeta" No. 89), we published a transcript of the videotape with the interview of the GRU officer. Our correspondents managed to meet with him three years after he was captured by Chechen militants and was able to escape. It turned out: he gave this testimony under torture.

We are publishing the second document today. We are also trying to clarify the circumstances of its origin. "Novaya Gazeta" will continue its journalistic investigation in order to eventually figure out: what actually happened in 1999 in Moscow, Volgodonsk, Buynaksk, and Ryazan, who is responsible for this, and what in the series of these tragedies, now entangled in a mass of rumors and assumptions, is the truth and what is a lie.

Investigations 12 — 13

...[real]ly: they will either be killed or forgiven, because serious Russian special services are hunting them.
— So, Chechen groups are guarding them? Owning them?
— Owning them rather than guarding them. But they are guarding them, certainly.
— So a deal to sell the terrorists is possible?
— With Gochiyayev, it's 100% so. He is certainly not free in his desires. That is, it's not Gochiyayev who determines whether he will give an interview or answer questions.
— And you personally encountered this?
— That is the conclusion I have reached. I cannot say I encountered it directly, because I want to emphasize: I have not seen any of these people. Obtaining and collecting information happens in various ways, but neither I nor Alexander Litvinenko have seen any of these people even once. Therefore, I am speaking now about my feelings and conclusions. I think they are absolutely correct. The level of freedom for Krymshamkhalov and Batchaev is certainly fundamentally greater than for Gochiyayev. By the way, from the materials I passed to Novaya Gazeta, this is quite obvious.
— And if Gochiyayev, according to his claims, has nothing to do with it, then why is he guarded so much and kept under such control? Effectively almost in imprisonment? Why wouldn't he come to the Prosecutor General's Office?
— I think we shouldn't hold anything back here or present the situation in a rosy light. He cannot surrender to Russian law enforcement agencies, as these are interested parties. We would then never know the truth at all. However, the problem boils down to the fact that the people controlling Gochiyayev are demanding money for his release.

During a teleconference from London in July of this year, Litvinenko and I were asked: why didn't we get the name of that very FSB officer from Gochiyayev, who brought hexogen in sugar bags to Gochiyayev's warehouses? After all, without this name, Gochiyayev's statement looks much less convincing than with it. Believe me, I tried to find out the name of the FSB officer repeatedly at every opportunity. All I managed to find out is that the FSB officer who stored the explosives at Gochiyayev's has since made a good career, advanced in service, and serves in the agencies to this day. That he is a well-known figure today. But further information can only be provided in exchange for money. And without money, Gochiyayev will not give the name. And since from the very beginning until today we did not intend to pay, explaining...

...I will not give a [moral] assessment of these people's behavior. This is the reality we faced. We faced the same problem when collecting testimony from Krymshamkhalov and Batchaev, who are controlled by other people. To the question of whether they know everything, they answer: yes, we know everything. To the question of whether they are ready to tell everything, they also answer "yes." To the question of whether they are ready to appear before the European Court in a third country, they answer: "Yes, we are ready." But until we are given money with which we can provide for our relatives, we will not give the information we possess. And do whatever you want.

— But, agree, this position is truly some kind of cannibalistic one, right? First, houses with living people, entire families with children, are blown up... Then the sadists say: yes, we blew them up, but in order to say who specifically participated in this, we need money to provide for our families...
— Yes, yes... But since I am the listening party, nothing depends on me here. All I can do is, like a parrot, say for the hundredth time that we have already been through this, that we do not pay money for information...
— And what to do next? Look: they exist, they are alive. Is that a conclusion? It is. They are under the control of certain people who do not currently belong to the federal structures of Russia. Or do they?
— They do not. Moreover, I am sure they belong one way or another to those people whom we call Chechen partisans and Chechen separatists. But this is again my assumption.

[Photo: 2002. Gochiyayev. A sheet with questions, the answers to which cost $3 million]

— And these people are trading terrorists held hostage by them! Can one say that?
— One can. True, Gochiyayev does not consider himself a terrorist.
— And for the terrorists to speak, they demand money from us, who are the hostages of the terrorists. Right? What to do next?
— Nothing. This is the reason why I personally believe that mine and Alexander Litvinenko's...

FROM THE EDITORS

AT THE PHANTOM SKETCH FACTORY

This is something completely new. Terrorists have become a commodity. Their producers demand a fee for a performance about the whole truth regarding the bombings in Moscow and Volgodonsk. $3,000,000.

Brief thoughts on this matter.

• Krymshamkhalov Yu.I. and Batchaev T.A. admit to being accomplices in the terrorist attacks. They write: yes, we are the perpetrators. It was us who brought the explosives into residential buildings in Moscow and Volgodonsk. True, we thought it was a warehouse and something else would blow up.
• Krymshamkhalov and Batchaev claim they dedicated their lives to the struggle for Chechen independence, and their patriotism was used blindly by the special services.
• Krymshamkhalov and Batchaev apologize to those to whom they "brought grief in September 1999."

BUT THE NAMES OF THOSE WHO USED THEM "BLINDLY," THEY WILL NAME FOR NO LESS THAN THREE MILLION DOLLARS.

Such a contract for the truth about the tragedy is demanded by the current owners of the popular performers (the whole country is covered in their portraits!) Krymshamkhalov and Batchaev. Those who are now hiding them in burrows and trading the common grief at small wholesale prices—intermediaries of the "thuggish" wing of the "militants"—approached the historian Yu. Felshtinsky themselves. They knew perfectly well that the researcher is acquainted with Boris Berezovsky, and a simple thought beat roughly like this: Berezovsky pays for exposing the regime, and the terrorists will sign anything they are paid for. Their statements resemble a promotional brochure: "Patrushev is mentioned repeatedly...", "we will dedicate the rest of our lives to the struggle for independence...".

But such information, obtained for money, has no value—only a price.

The deal did not take place. Similarly for Gochiyayev. Here he is in the photo with a piece of paper on which questions for him are formulated. A snapshot certifying that he is alive.

Terrorists do not deny their guilt. They themselves are under strict control. The controllers demand money so that the terrorists' testimony matches any paid order.

So far, their business of converting terrorist attacks into memoirs has not succeeded. But, I think, market research continues in other directions.

Then all three will be killed—when they get tired of washing dishes for them.

Now—personal feelings.

Some statist-patriots play their spy games. Sometimes they dress up Russian tank crews and, under the guise of Chechens, send them to ingloriously take Grozny. Sometimes they train Basayev's men to win a campaign in Abkhazia. Sometimes they hand over weapons to Dudayev, or make their agent Lazovsky a central Moscow gangster, or conduct "exercises" in Ryazan with real hexogen.

They played so much that they lost control. And they couldn't help but lose it. The "agents" began to live independently. Without looking back at the "office" [FSB].

They themselves spawned such a number of killers that they can no longer cope.

In Chechnya, as a result of sadistic sweep operations, a tribe of war has grown, thugs who no longer even know the language in which negotiations will eventually have to be conducted. These thugs, who have Gochiyayev, Batchaev, and Krymshamkhalov in their fist, are the future phantom sketches. War and death are all their muscle groups are fit for.

Unwillingness to negotiate with the sane will lead (or has already led?) to the fact that there will truly be no one left to talk to. Only for the generals is this a joy—the business continues! But for a person, it's a disaster. No matter how you look at it—it's Nord-Ost everywhere.

And it turned out that both the statist-patriots and the separatist-patriots have their own business, already inseparable from each other: war. And one "cover."