COMMENTS

JULY 26, 2002 FRIDAY No. 136 (3004)

Litvinenko loves fairy tales...
press conference
Grigory Dubovitsky

YESTERDAY, a press conference of the public group for the investigation of terrorist acts committed in the capital in September 1999 was held in one of Moscow's prestigious hotels. During it, former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko and lawyer Yuri Felshtinsky, who are currently in London, spoke to journalists via an "Internet bridge." They presented independent expertise in London showed that this photograph is a fake and is most likely a photomontage.

As lawyer Yuri Felshtinsky added, there are several other facts that point to Gochiyayev's innocence. It is noteworthy that all these "facts" are taken from a letter by Gochiyayev himself. In particular, according to Felshtinsky, he personally warned the police by phone about the planned explosion in the house on Borisovskie Prudy. In addition, Gochiyayev did indeed rent basement premises where subse...

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and for the FSB — Jokes

expert opinion

Timofey Borisov

The FSB has once again ignored the latest act of "revelations" by Alexander Litvinenko. The position of the Russian Chekists remains unchanged — they will not participate in Berezovsky's PR.

When we contacted the FSB by phone, instead of a comment, they told us a joke about how Khrushchev from the program "Good Night, Little Ones" sued his puppeteer because he wouldn't take his finger out of his head, even when he went to the toilet. In the FSB's opinion, Litvinenko is trying to engage in self-promotion, working off the considerable funds invested in him by well-known advertisers.

However, the Litvinenko show was discredited even before it began. Most surprisingly, the hand was applied to this by... Chechen militants. On Movladi Udugov's website, several hours before the start of the Moscow-London teleconference, the militants stated that Litvinenko had not met or communicated with Achimez Gochiyayev. Litvinenko illegally obtained fragmentary copies of his testimony from an unscrupulous American correspondent. The originals of Gochiyayev's testimony, according to the Chechen militants, are with them. As proof, they provided these excerpts from Gochiyayev's story, and as a result, everyone interested could familiarize themselves with Litvinenko's accusatory speeches before Litvinenko even uttered them.

• [commission's] handwritten testimony of Gochiyayev himself, of those suspected in the terrorist attacks, in particular Achimez Gochiyayev.

Alexander Litvinenko began his communication with journalists by talking about materials that, in his view, fundamentally refute the FSB's version of the organizers and perpetrators of the terrorist attacks. These primarily include the handwritten testimony of Gochiyayev himself, passed by him through intermediaries. Additionally, there are his personal photographs, in particular, the one where he is depicted together with Khattab. According to Litvinenko, an expert examination conducted by an "independent commission" confirmed that he [Gochiyayev] did it "at the request of his old acquaintance," whose name he did not mention.

Further accusations by Litvinenko and Felshtinsky only repeated hints of the involvement of Russian special services in the terrorist attacks, as well as the idea that "the presented testimony of Gochiyayev can be trusted because it was given voluntarily and while at large." At the same time, both of them were unable to provide convincing evidence that the materials they passed were indeed received from the person whom the FSB considers the main suspect.

As the issue was going to press

On the live air of NTV, the head of the operational-search department of the FSB, Ivan Mironov, stated that one of the defendants in the 1999 apartment bombings in Moscow, Adam Dekkushev, in his testimony, exposes Chechen terrorists as active participants in these crimes.