#5
From: "Peter Heinlein" <pern2pete@adslhome.dk>
Subject: Vibeke Sperling's commentary on 1999 apartment bomb attacks
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002

David,

The distinguished Danish journalist Vibeke Sperling aired a commentary on Danish radio last week about the Berezovsky-financed video on the 1999 apartment bloc bomb attacks. With her permission, Pernille and I have translated the report to English because we feel Ms. Sperling, with her vast knowledge of Russia, makes several valuable observations that might be of interest to JRL readers.

Vibeke Sperling is currently Moscow correspondent for the Politiken newspaper in Copenhagen.

Best regards.
Peter Heinlein/Pernille Kardel

INTRODUCTION: No Russian television channel has thus far dared to show the documentary "Assault on Russia" which lays out allegations that the Russian special service (FSB) was behind the apartment bloc bomb attacks that took place in several Russian cities in September, 1999. At the time, the Kremlin quickly accused the Chechens. No proof was ever provided that Chechens were responsible, but the allegations were used to whip up enough fear and hatred for a new war against them.

The documentary is based primarily on revelations unearthed by Russian journalists in the months following the attacks. But the facts of the case, and the contradictory statements of officials, which were then discussed in the open, are now suppressed, possibly because they raise questions about whether Vladimir Putin may have come to power through illegal methods.

TEXT: "Who lied to the president?" wrote the daily Nezavizimaya Gazeta in a headline after the documentary "Asssault on Russia" was shown last week in Russia for the first time by the opposition party Liberal Russia. The video about the 1999 bomb attacks shows that President Putin, who was then the newly appointed prime minister, had more than just a hard time finding out what the truth was. Since then he has refused to answer requests for an independent investigation of what really happened.

After the four bomb attacks caused more than 300 deaths between the sixth and 16th of September 1999, Russians, who were extremely afraid, created their own citizen security forces in apartment buildings around the country. That may have saved the lives of residents in one apartment building in Ryazan where, on the evening of September 22nd, a suspicious car and two men were observed carrying bags into the basement while a woman kept lookout. They fled when confronted by the residents.

Police and officers from local office of the FSB were called in, and the building was evacuated. The next day, Prime Minister Putin said the alertness of the residents had prevented a new terror attack. That account was repeated by the Interior Minister. But the following day, an uproar was created when the head of the FSB, Nikolai Patrushev said the incident had in fact been an anti-terror exercise arranged by his service.

By that time, police and FSB in Ryazan had reported that the identities of the terrorists had been established after police sketches were distributed, that investigators had found an apartment where the terror attacks had been prepared, and that the terrorists would soon be caught. It was also reported that local specialists had determined that the explosive seized in Ryazan was hexagen, exactly the same as that used in at least one of the deadly Moscow blasts, and that the detonator was also the same.

But according to the head of the FSB, what was seized in Ryazan was only sugar and a few innocent, locally purchased batteries and toys. Subsequently, Putin changed his explanation and adjusted his statement to match that of his security service chief.

"Somebody must have lied", as the paper Nezavizimaya Gazeta writes, in the knowledge that the terror attacks were not carried out by the Chechens but by the FSB to win support for a new war against the Chechens, and for the until-then unknown Putin as president.

It is more than awful to allege that the FSB cold-bloodedly killed Russians in order to advance their plans for Russia's future. And as long as the crimes were not solved, it is just a conspiracy theory that many Russians believe in.

The party Liberal Russia chose very symbolically to have the first Moscow screening of the documentary at the Sakharov Museum, with the idea of showcasing a document that alleges the KGB's systematic murder of its own citizens.

"These kinds of habits die slowly", says member of the Duma, or lower house, and Liberal Russia's leader Sergei Yushenkov, who has brought 800 copies of the video to Russia from London. According to Yushenkov, the KGB's methods are carried on (immortalized) in its successor organization FSB, because the intelligence agency has not been put under parliamentary control. He hopes the documentary can open Duma members' and the public's eyes to that.

"Leaders of the FSB have said that the organization is following proud traditions from the KGB time. And what are KGB traditions? A never-ending string of crimes against the Russian people. Today the FSB controls everything, and there is no one to keep an eye on them. The FSB is almighty and uncontrolled. It is very serious for Russia's future," Yushenkov says.

And in the documentary a question mark has been raised as to why Putin, the former FSB chief, retained Patrushev in that position even after the service chief at least seriously misled Putin about the 1999 bomb attacks.

Liberal Russia does not claim that the documentary proves the FSB was behind the bomb attacks, but the party insists that an independent investigation is necessary, and notes that the very fact that Putin has so far refused such an inquiry is in itself a cause for concern.

An exiled historian says in the video that it is unthinkable that the operation in Ryazan was an exercise. "One doesn't make a military exercise when one is already in a war".

Many residents of Ryazan had talked in a similar fashion, and at least at the time there was a belief that the FSB had been ready to victimize them in yet another terror attack, for which the Chechens were to have been blamed. But what they think today is a different case.

Two French TV journalists discovered this shift a few months ago when they were working on the story. They found that eyewitnesses who earlier had been willing to speak no longer wanted, or dared, to do so. One jounalist from Ryazan who had promised to assist the French team suddenly backed out of the project after heroin allegedly planted on him was found, and he was reportedly told he could only avoid a lengthy term in prison by staying away from the old case.

The exiled historian says that if the Ryazan incident had been an exercise, the bureaucratically governed FSB would have had a lot of paper to prove it. It would have been the easiest possible thing to cleanse the service by providing this documentation. "But I know from FSB staffers that it doesn't exist", he says.

The claim that this was an exercise was openly laughed at on television at the time by residents of the apartment block in Ryazan, by commentators in the press, by politicians, and by many civil servants, including some from the FSB. In the documentary, a TV clip is shown wherein FSB agents defending the claim that it is an exercise are getting themselves caught in one contradiction after another and are being ridiculed, not least by the residents of the building.

One of the great strengths of the documentary is the insight it provides into the open climate of debate in Russia during President Yeltsin's last years, as compared to the situation today. Then it was possible to speak much more openly than today. Now no Russian television station dares to show the documentary, though it primarily consists of revelations made by Russian journalists and cuts from Russian TV programs about the case in the months after.

Liberal Russia is of the opinion that the video provides enough information to begin impeachment proceedings against Putin. The party does understand, however, that there is no support for impeachment in the Duma.

Many commentators agree that the truth ought to be brought to the surface, but the painful case is suppressed, and even made light of, in most media. And many who are of the view that the truth ought to surface do not agree that it should be the whole truth if Putin turns out to have been involved, and not just been lied to.

It is the courts that should answer all the open questions in the documentary, Yushenkov says, but no court seem willing to do so. Instead, everyone involved in distribution of the documentary is threatened with court action. For fear of getting dirty hands from the case, many politicians and ordinary Russians excuse themselves by noting that the documentary is just part of a campaign against Putin by the financial baron-in-exile Boris Berezovsky, who has announced he will knock down Putin as president. Berezovsky is no angel, so it is unfortunate that is is he who is behind production of the video. He has now threatened to produce one million copies of the documentary to be distributed in Russia unless it is shown publicly. That is not likely to happen.

Whatever comes out of the case, the documentary shows an open and infected wound on Russia, which would rather forget this case, as well as the war in Chechnya that resulted and is still going on while the West turns its back.

It can only be hoped that this documentary contributes to reviving western interest in the innocent victims of something that looks like revenge without end for crimes which the documentary at least raises the possibility may have been the nefarious work of Russia's secret services.