Saturday, July 27, 2002, No. 131

NEWS

Chekists decided to answer Lieutenant Colonel Litvinenko

And Sergei Kovalev called him a PR man

Polemic

Yesterday, the FSB stated that it has weighty evidence of the connection between Achimez Gochiyayev, a suspect in the 1999 apartment bombings in Moscow, and the leader of Chechen militants, Khattab. Thus, the Chekists decided to partially reveal investigative secrets in order to debunk the version of former FSB Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Litvinenko about the organization of these terrorist attacks by the special services themselves (which 'Kommersant' outlined yesterday).

The video link with London, during which former Chekist Alexander Litvinenko provided testimony from the Karachay native Achimez Gochiyayev, was commented on yesterday by both state security agencies and representatives of the public commission investigating the terrorist attacks in Moscow in September 1999. The FSB, which had previously made statements that arguing with the 'criminal' Litvinenko—who, while a Chekist, even recorded his wife on a voice recorder—was beneath the dignity of the agency, finally stooped to providing evidence of its innocence. Recall that the former Chekist provided a letter from the Karachay native Gochiyayev, who claims that he was asked to rent the premises in southeast Moscow, where the explosions later occurred, by a school friend who, as he now suspects, was an FSB agent.

The press service of this agency has now announced its readiness to present additional evidence of Achimez Gochiyayev's connection with the international terrorist Khattab. In particular, the FSB decided to make public photographic materials 'taken...'

[Photo caption]: In the dispute with Lieutenant Colonel Litvinenko, the FSB uses a visual argument: to the right of Khattab is Achimez Gochiyayev

Litvinenko

• What was heard during the aforementioned video link with London, he was forced to state that "the element of PR in the presentation of the material was unacceptably high."
• He suggested that this PR was organized by Boris Berezovsky, but immediately qualified that he could not assert this unequivocally.
• Mr. Kovalev drew attention to the fact that Alexander Litvinenko, for some reason, presented Achimez Gochiyayev's statement only two months after he received it through an unknown intermediary, and the testimony itself contains too many strange contradictions that Mr. Litvinenko did not even attempt to resolve.
• "If Gochiyayev knew that this former classmate of his was an FSB agent," Deputy Kovalev wondered, "then why did he start fulfilling his strange requests (to rent warehouse space)? And if he only realized it later, then why is he covering for him now? And why did Gochiyayev rent these warehouses in the name of a deceased person?"
• According to the chairman of the Russian public commission, the version of the special services' involvement in the bombings, if it is put forward, must be proven impeccably, which has not happened yet.

Recent Developments

• It is noteworthy that yesterday the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office (GVP) interrogated a friend of Alexander Litvinenko, retired FSB Lieutenant Colonel Mikhail Trepashkin, who served 20 years in the state security agencies.
• Before the interrogation, he made a statement that the GVP would most likely ask him about his participation in the public commission on the bombings and about the origin of Gochiyayev's statement.
• However, at the prosecutor's office, a correspondent was...