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15.08.07
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“They Haven’t Gone Away You Know”
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By Dmitry Babich
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Terrorist Acts in Russia: the List of Dates and Trials
As the investigation continues into the derailment of a train between Moscow and St. Petersburg on Monday night, the signs increasingly point to terrorism. An explosive device, planted next to a railroad bridge near the town of Malaya Vishera, derailed 16 cars of the train, but, luckily, the train’s momentum carried it over the bridge and thus avoided a worse crash. More than 60 people suffered injuries as a result of the accident, but no one died. While Alexander Bastrykin, a deputy general prosecutor, told RIA Novosti that “a final conclusion has yet to be reached” on the cause, he said that terrorism was one of the most likely options being considered. Photo-fits have been compiled of two suspects.
The blast happened outside the city of Novgorod, whose governor was recently dismissed having been criticized as being unable to handle the acute criminal situation in the region. RIA Novosti quoted Nikolai Kovalyov, head of the committee for veterans' affairs at the State Duma, parliament's lower house, and a former chief of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), who suggested that the incident could be connected to a military operation in Ingushetia where almost 2,500 Interior Ministry officers have been deployed to fight militants.
"This could have been an attempt to divert attention to another location - a method frequently used by terrorists," he said. "Or else there could be quite a trivial explanation of boys playing war games."
The details of the explosion on the main railroad of Russia, connecting Moscow and St. Petersburg, point to a terrorist act, “organized by professionals,” according to the words of Russian security service FSB operatives investigating the scene of the crime. It has been more than a year since rebels from Chechnya or Dagestan have organized a terrorist attack outside the Caucasus.
Russia Profile’s Dmitry Babich provides a summary of terrorist attacks in Russia since 1999.
September 9, 1999 - an apartment block on Guryanov St. in Moscow is destroyed by explosives stored in the basement of the building.
September 13, 1999 - another apartment block in Moscow, on Kashirskoye Highway, is destroyed in the same way. As a result of two explosions 224 people died.
September 16, 1999 - another apartment block is blown up in the southern town of Volgodonsk. The bomb was placed in a truck parked near the building, leading to dozens of deaths.
September 22, 1999 – men are found leaving explosives in the entrance to an apartment block in the city of Ryazan by a local resident. Local police de-fuse the device, and the planters turn out to be members of the FSB, who claim to be on a “training exercise”. Local police insist the explosives were genuine, leading conspiracy theorists to suggest that the whole series of apartment bombings were a ruse to create a pretext for the Second Chechen War.
July 9, 2000 – An explosive device was detonated at a market in Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia, a Russian autonomous republic in the North Caucuses bordering on rebel Chechnya and the republic of Ingushetia, whose population is ethnically related to Chechens and fought a war with the Ossetians in the early 1990s. The bomb killed six people and injured another 18.
March 24, 2001 – A car bomb exploded near the entrance to a market in Mineralniye Vody, a city in the Stavropol region of southern Russia, near Chechnya. Twenty one people were killed – three of them children – and 100 others injured.
April 28, 2002 – A bomb exploded near the entrance of a market in Vladikavkaz, killing nine and injuring 46.
May 9, 2002 – A bomb exploded during a Victory day parade in Kaspiysk, a town in Daghestan. Twenty of the 43 killed were soldiers taking part in the parade. Of the 23 civilians who were killed while watching the parade, 12 were children. Another 138 people were injured.
October 23, 2002 - Chechen rebels take 850 theater goers hostage at the Nord Ost musical in Moscow. Special forces end the siege using gas, most of the hostage takers and scores of hostages are killed.
December 27, 2002 – Two suicide bombers, driving a car and a KamAZ truck, respectively, loaded with explosives, crashed through the barrier surrounding the headquarters of the pro-Moscow Chechen government and destroyed the building, killing 78 people and injuring another 200. The explosion was filmed by the terrorists, who authorities believe were linked to former Chechen separatist prime minister Shamil Basayev and former Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov. A group of Chechen businessmen offered a $5 million reward for the capture of Basayev and $50,000 for that of Maskhadov – dead or alive.
May 12, 2003 – Three suicide bombers blew up a truck loaded with explosives in Znamenskoye, the main town in the Nadterechny district in Chechnya, an area that is regarded as being anti-separatist. The blast destroyed the main district administration building, the local FSB office and police precinct. Sixty people were killed and more than 200 injured.
December 5, 2003 – A bomb exploded in a passenger train moving from the southern Russian town of Yessentuki to the North Caucasus town of Kislovodsk, killing 47 and wounding more than 100 people. The investigation determined that a suicide bomber was behind the blast. In January, Russia’s deputy Prosecutor General, Sergey Fridinsky, said that the investigation was close to identifying and apprehending those behind the attack.
December 9, 2003 – A female suicide bomber detonated her explosives near the entrance of the National Hotel in the center of Moscow. Two people were killed and several were injured. The Moscow police and special services carried out an intensive investigation, looking for the bomber’s accomplices, but no arrests have been made to date.
July 5, 2003 – Two female Chechen suicide bombers detonated their explosives near the ticket office during a large open-air rock festival in Tushino, a Moscow suburb. Twelve people died at the scene and another two later died in hospital. The women apparently planned to detonate the explosives within the grounds of the Krilya festival, which was attended by 40,000 people, so the casualty figures could have been much higher. One of the two was stopped for a search at the entrances to the event, leading them to explode their cargoes early.
July 10, 2003 – A female suicide bomber, Zarema Muzhakhoyeva, 23, was arrested in the act of trying to detonate a bomb in a downtown Moscow restaurant. FSB explosives expert Major Georgy Trofimov was killed when the bomb exploded as he was attempting to defuse it.
September 3, 2003 – An explosion on a passenger train near the southern Russian city of Kislovodsk killed four passengers and injured 49. Russian Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov said that one of the suspects in the explosion, an ethnic Karachai, was arrested near the site of the blast. Ustinov did not release the name of the suspect and said that he had been injured in the explosion and had been unable to answer questions. Other suspects in the blast were said to have fled in two separate cars.
February 6, 2004 – An explosive device was set off at the rush hour (8.40 a.m.) in a subway car between Paveletskaya and Avtozavodskaya metro stations in Moscow. The explosion killed at least 40 people and injured 134. Hundreds of passengers were evacuated from the station. The total number of killed was likely to rise as many of the wounded were in serious condition in hospital and not all of those killed had been identified.
Police and security services say that the blast was most likely caused by a suicide bomber who set off the bomb in the second car of the train. The police reported that the bomb contained about 2.5 kg of TNT.
September 1-3, 2004 – a group of terrorists, mostly Ingush and Chechens, took hostage the schoolchildren in the North Ossetian town of Beslan. After a 2.5 day-siege during which the terrorists denied water to hostages and executed several of them, a botched rescue operation led to the deaths of 331 people, mostly children and the soldiers of elite troops trying to neutralize the terrorists. Out of 21 terrorists, only one survived and was sentenced to life imprisonment in the year 2006.
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It should be noted that the number of terrorist acts decreased after the tragedy at Beslan. One of the reasons could be the changes in Russian electoral law introduced in 2005-2006. The changes canceled direct election of the country’s regional governors and abolished a number of other elements of Russia’s electoral system, which made a person’s vote valuable. For example, there are no more required minimums of voter participation, candidates can run only after they are included in the lists of officially registered parties and there is no more “against all” options for voters.
All of these measures decreased the role of voters, making efforts to de-stabilize the situation before major elections a less attractive option for terrorists. Until 2004, elections were often preceded or accompanied by terrorist acts, especially in 1999 and 2000, when a new Duma was elected and Putin became the president of Russia. Since 2004, when Putin won presidential elections for the second time, the number of terrorist acts decreased dramatically.
On June 12 2005, a train coming to Moscow from Chechnya’s capital Grozny was derailed by a bomb set off in Moscow region, near the town of Uzunovo. 9 people were injured, but, luckily, no one killed. Police arrested two Russian extremist nationalists from Russian National Unity (RNE) movement. Both were convicted in April 2007 for this crime.
On May 29, 2004, a train was derailed by explosion near Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia. Again there were no deaths, despite the fact that terrorists used more than 5 kilos of TNT. |
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