Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Moscow subway terror: FSB role in Moscow apartment 1999. Putin blocked independent investigation

Moscow subway terror: FSB role in Moscow apartment 1999. Putin blocked independent investigation



According to Johann Hari, "the FSB is simply the renamed KGB, whose raison d'etre for decades was essentially instituitional terror in service of the govt. Putin is himself an ex-KGB man, and he has twice blocked, through the Duma, any independent investigation into the bombings. No evidence of Chechen involvement has ever been forthcoming, and the Chechen groups have claimed that they were not responsible — although they admit to other acts of violence. The Ryazan "training exercise" excuse is preposterous. It does seem to suggest that the Russian secret services were caught red-handed".

Ryazan is a place where more bombs were found and subsequently labelled a training exercise by the security services when it transpired they were involved in planting the devices.

A lawyer called MikhailTrepashkin tasked with investigating the bombings found that the basement of one of the bombed buildings was rented by FSB officer Vladimir Romanovich and that the latter was witnessed by several people. However, Trepashkin was unable to bring the evidence to court, because he was arrested by the FSB in October 2003 (imprisoned inNizhny Tagil), allegedly for "disclosing state secrets", just a few days before he was to make his findings public He was sentenced by a military closed court to four years imprisonment. Amnesty International issued a statement that "there are serious grounds to believe that Mikhail Trepashkin was arrested and convicted under falsified criminal charges which may be politically motivated, in order to prevent him continuing his investigative and legal work related to the 1999 apartment bombings in Moscow and other cities.

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