Wednesday, April 30, 2003, No. 78

The case of the explosions is finished

For the most terrible terrorist attacks in Russian history

The investigation into the largest terrorist attacks in Russian history — the bombings of residential buildings in Moscow and Volgodonsk in September 1999 — was officially completed the other day by the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation. Currently, the two defendants in the custody of the special services — Adam Dekkushev and Yusuf Krymshamkhalov — have begun reviewing the case materials. The organizer of the crime, Achimez Gochiyayev, is on the wanted list, and all the other bombers — Khakim Abayev, Ravil Akhmyarov, Denis Saitakov, Zaur Batchayev — according to operational data, have been killed.

According to the investigation, all these people were members of the "Muslim Society No. 3" created in Karachay-Cherkessia, which was headed by Gochiyayev and which existed on money from Chechen militants, primarily Khattab. It was he, according to the special services, who gave the order to organize the terrorist attacks in Russia. As a result, members of the society bought saltpeter and aluminum powder, mixed it, supplied it with hexogen, loaded it into sugar bags and sent it to Moscow and Volgodonsk, where it was used for the explosions. A total of 240 people died from the terrorist attacks. Last year, Dekkushev and Krymshamkhalov were arrested in Georgia and handed over to Russia. During the detention of the latter, Zaur Batchayev was killed in a shootout. Gochiyayev, according to some reports, is still hiding in Georgia. As for Khakim Abayev, Ravil Akhmyarov, and Denis Saitakov, according to FSB data, they all died during the war in Chechnya, although their bodies have not been found. Thus, only Dekkushev and Krymshamkhalov — secondary figures in this story — will stand trial for now.

A correspondent for the newspaper "Vremya Novostey" spoke yesterday with the defendants' lawyers. "Adam Dekkushev told me that he joined this 'Muslim Society' out of bitterness toward the whole world," said defense attorney Natalya Tarasevich. "He believed that 'there is only evil around' and hoped to restore justice by joining this society, where, as he thought, there were the same kind of believers and principled people. But later Dekkushev admitted that the leaders of the society also deceived him. He always said that he was categorically against the death of people, but everything turned out differently. According to him, at first they brought the car with explosives to a dam in Volgodonsk and wanted to blow it up there with the aim of stopping the offensive of federal troops on Dagestan and Chechnya. But then it was decided to place the truck with the dangerous cargo near one of the residential buildings. Dekkushev himself understands nothing about explosives, so other people carried out the terrorist attacks. In prison, he communicates actively both with me and with the investigation and counts on a favorable outcome for himself in this story."

"Yusuf Krymshamkhalov graduated from a regular Soviet school in his time," says lawyer Shamil Arifulov, "he was fond of classical wrestling and was a prize-winner in many competitions in his youth. He was supposed to go serve in a sports company, but ended up in the Western Group of Forces. When Krymshamkhalov returned to his homeland, he faced, like many of his peers, common problems: no good education, therefore no permanent job, hence material difficulties. As a result, he got by with irregular earnings, communicated with various people, including Gochiyayev, whom he saw only two or three times in 1999. After the bombings of residential buildings, he ended up in Chechnya, and then in Georgia, where he was detained. In prison, he is now reading..."