Alexander Litvinenko Read online

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  Chapter 5

  The FSB fiasco in Ryazan When someone commits a crime, it s very important to catch them while the trail is still hot.

  Nikolai Patrushev-about the events in Ryazan. Itogi, 5 October 1999 In September 1999, monstrous acts of terrorism were perpetrated in Buinaksk, Moscow, and Volgodonsk.

  We shall begin with the terrorist attack which could have been the most terrible of them all, if it had not been foiled. On September 22, something unexpected happened: in Ryazan, FSB operatives were spotted planting sugar sacks containing hexogene in the bedroom community of Dashkovo-Pesochnya.

  At 9:15 p.m., Alexei Kartofelnikov, a driver for the Spartak soccer club who lived in the single-entrance twelve-story block built more than twenty years earlier at number 14/16 Novosyolov Street, phoned the Dashkovo-Pesochnya office of the Oktyabrsky Region Department of the Interior (ROVD) in Ryazan and reported that ten minutes earlier, he had seen a white model five or seven Zhiguli automobile with the Moscow license plate T534 VT 77 RUS outside the entrance to his apartment block, where there was a twentyfour hour Night and Day shop on the ground floor. The car had driven into the yard and stopped. A man and a young woman got out, went down into the basement of the building, and after a while came back. Then the car was driven right up against the basement door, and all three of the people in it began carrying some kind of sacks inside.

  One of the men had a mustache and the woman was wearing a tracksuit. Then all of them got into the car and drove away.

  Note how quickly Kartofelnikov reacted. The police were less prompt in their response.

  I spotted the model seven Zhiguli as I was walking home from the garage,

  Kartofelnikov recalled, and I noticed the license plate out of professional habit. I saw that the regional number had been masked by a piece of paper with the Ryazan serial number 62 . I ran home to phone the police. I dialed 02 and got this lazy reply: call such-and-such a number. I called it, and it was busy. I had to keep dialing the number for ten minutes before I got through. That gave the terrorists enough time to carry all of the sacks into the basement and set the detonators& If I d gotten through to the police immediately& the terrorists would have been arrested right there in their car.

  When they arrived at 9:58 p.m. Moscow time, the policemen, commanded by warrant officer Andrei Chernyshov, discovered three fifty-kilogram sugar sacks in the basement of a residential block containing seventy-seven apartments. Chernyshov, who was the first to enter the mined basement, recalled:

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  At about ten, we got a warning call from the officer on duty: suspicious individuals had been seen coming out of the basement of house number 14/16 Novosyolov Street. Near the house we were met by a girl who told us about a man who had come out of the basement and driven away in a car with its license plates masked. I left one officer in front of the entrance and went down into the basement with the other. The basement in that house is deep and completely flooded with water. The only dry spot is a tiny little storeroom like a brick shed. We shined the light in, and there were several sugar sacks arranged in a stack. There was a slit in the upper sack, and we could see some kind of electronic device: wires wrapped round with insulating tape, a timer& Of course, it was all a bit of a shock for us. We ran out of the basement, I stayed behind to guard the entrance, while the guys went to evacuate the inhabitants. After about fifteen minutes, reinforcements arrived, and the chief of the UVD turned up. The sacks of explosive were removed by men from the Ministry of Emergencies [MChS] in the presence of representatives of the FSB. Of course, after our bomb technicians had rendered them harmless. No one had any doubt that this was a genuine emergency situation.

  One of the sacks had been slit open, and a homemade detonating device had been set inside, consisting of three batteries, an electronic watch, and a homemade detonating charge. The detonator was set for 5.30 a.m. on Thursday morning. The bomb technicians from the police engineering and technology section of the Ryazan Region UVD took just eleven minutes to disarm the bomb, under the leadership of their section head, police Lieutenant Yury Tkachenko, and then immediately, at approximately 11 p.m., they conducted a trial explosion with the mixture. There was no detonation, either because the sample was too small, or because the engineers had taken it from the upper layers of the mixture, while the main concentration of hexogene might be in the bottom of the sack.

  Express analysis of the substance in the sacks with the help of a gas analyzer indicated fumes of a hexogene-type explosive substance. It is important at this point to note that there could not have been any mistake. The instruments used were modern and in good condition, and the specialists who carried out the analysis were highly qualified.

  The contents of the sacks did not outwardly resemble granulated sugar. All the witnesses, who discovered the suspicious sacks, later confirmed that they contained a yellow substance in the form of granules that resembled small vermicelli, which is exactly what hexogene looks like. On September 23, the press center of the Ministry of the Interior of Russia also announced that analysis of the substance concerned indicated the presence of hexogene vapor, and that an explosive device had been disarmed. In other words, on the night proceeding September 23, local experts had determined that the detonator was live, and the sugar was an explosive mixture. Our initial examination indicated the presence of explosive substances& We believed there was a real danger of explosion,

  Lieutenant Colonel Sergei Kabashov, head of the Oktyabrsky Region OVD, later stated.

  House number 14/16 on Novosyolov Street was no chance selection on the bombers part. It was a standard house in an unprestigious part of town, inhabited by simple people.

  Set up against the front of the house was a twenty-four hour shop selling groceries. The inhabitants of the house would surely not suspect that people unloading goods by the trap door of a twenty-four hour food store might be terrorists. The house stood on the edge of

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  Ryazan close to an open area, which was known to local people as the Old Circle, on a low rise. It was built of silicate brick. The sacks of explosives in the basement had been placed beside the building s main support, so if there had been an explosion, the entire building would have collapsed. The next house, built on the soft sandy soil of the slope, could also have been damaged.

  So the alarm was raised, and the inhabitants of a house in Ryazan were roused from their beds and evacuated into the street in whatever they happened to be wearing at the time.

  This is how the newspaper Trud described the scene: In a matter of minutes, people were forced to abandon their apartments without being allowed to gather their belongings (a fact which thieves later exploited) and gather in front of the dark, empty house.

  Women, old men, and children shuffled about in front of the entrance, reluctant to set out into the unknown. Some of them were not wearing outer clothing, or were even barefooted& They hopped from one foot to the other in the freezing wind for several hours, and the invalids who had been brought down in their wheelchairs wept and cursed the entire world.

  The house was cordoned off. It was cold. The director of the local cinema, the Oktyabr, took pity on the people and let them into the hall, and she also prepared tea for everyone.

  The only people left in the building were several old invalids, who were in no physical condition to leave their apartments, including one old woman who was paralyzed and whose daughter stayed all night with the police cordon expecting an explosion. This is how she recalled the event: Between 10 and 11 p.m., police officers went to the apartments, asking people to get outside as quickly as possible. I ran out just as I was, in my nightshirt, with only my raincoat thrown over it. Outside in the yard, I learned there was a bomb in our house. I d left my mother behind in the flat, and she can t even get out of bed on her own. I dashed over to the policemen in horror: Let me into the house, help me bring my mother out!

&nbs
p; They wouldn t let me back in. It was half past two before they started going to each of the flats with its occupants and checking them for signs of anything suspicious. They came to me too. I showed the policeman my sick mother and said I wouldn t go anywhere without her. He calmly wrote something down on his notepad and disappeared.

  And I suddenly had this realization that my mother and I were probably the only two people in a house with a bomb in it. I felt quite unbearably afraid& But then suddenly there was a ring at the door. Standing on the doorstep were two senior police officers.

  They asked me sternly: Have you decided you want to be buried alive, then, woman? I was so scared my legs were giving way under me, but I stood my ground, I wouldn t go without my mother. And then they suddenly took pity on me: All right then, stay here, your house has already been made safe. It turned out they d removed the detonators from the charge even before they inspected the flats. Then I just dashed straight outside&

  All kinds of emergency services and managers turned up at the house. In addition, since analysis had determined the presence of hexogene, the cordon was ordered to expand the exclusion zone, in case there was an explosion. The head of the local UFSB, Major49 General Alexander Sergeiev, congratulated the inhabitants of the building on being granted a second life. Hero of the hour Kartofelnikov was told that he must have been born under a lucky star (a few days later, he was presented with a valuable gift from the municipal authorities for finding the bomb-a Russian-made color television). One of the Russian telegraph agencies informed the world of his fortunate discovery as follows: Terrorist bombing thwarted in Ryazan: sacks containing a mixture of sugar and hexogene found by police in apartment house basement.

  First deputy staff officer for civil defense and emergencies in the Ryazan Region, Colonel Yury Karpeiev, has informed an ITAR-TASS correspondent that the substance found in the sacks is undergoing analysis. According to the operations duty officer of the Ministry of Emergencies of the Russian Federation in Moscow, the detonating device discovered was set for 5.30 Moscow time on Thursday morning. Acting head of the UVD of the Ryazan Region, Alexei Savin, told the ITAR-TASS correspondent that the make, color, and number of the car in which the explosive was brought to the scene had been identified. According to Savin, specialists were carrying out a series of tests to determine the composition and explosion hazard posed by the mixture discovered in the sacks&

  First deputy mayor of the region, Vladimir Markov, said that the situation in Ryazan is calm. The inhabitants of the building, who were rapidly evacuated from their apartments immediately following the discovery of the suspected explosive, have returned to their apartments. All the neighboring houses have been checked. According to Markov, it is the inhabitants themselves who must be the main support of agencies of law enforcement in their struggle with this evil which has appeared in our country& The more vigilant we are, the more reliable the defense will be.

  At five minutes past midnight, the sacks were carried out of the basement and loaded into a fire engine. However, it was four in the morning before a decision was taken on where the explosives should be taken. The OMON, the FSB, and the local military units refused to take in the sacks. In the end, they were taken to the yard of the Central Office for Civil Defense and Emergencies of Ryazan, where they were stacked in a garage, and a guard was placed over them. The rescuers later recalled that they would have used the sugar in their tea, except that the analysis had shown the presence of hexogene.

  The sacks lay at the civil defense base for several days, until they were taken away to the MVD s expert center for criminalistic analysis in Moscow. The press office of the UVD of the Ryazan Region actually announced that the sacks had been taken to Moscow on September 23. At 8.30 in the morning, the work of removing the bomb and checking the building was completed, and the residents were allowed to return to their apartments.

  On the evening of September 22, 1,200 policemen were put on alert and a so-called Intercept plan was set in motion. Several eyewitnesses were identified, sketches were produced of three suspects, and roadblocks were set up on highways in the region and in nearby localities. The witnesses testimony was quite detailed, and there was some hope that the perpetrators would be apprehended.

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  The governor of the region and the municipal authorities allocated additional funds to the counter-terrorist offensive. Members of the armed forces were used to guard apartment blocks, and at night watch was organized among residents in all the buildings, while a further search was carried out of the entire residential district, especially of the apartment houses (by Friday, eighty percent of the houses in the town had been checked.) The city markets were deserted, with traders afraid to bring in their goods and customers afraid to go out shopping. According to the deputy mayor of Ryazan, Anatoly Baranov, Practically no one in the town slept, and not only did the residents of that house spend the night on the street, so did the entire 30,000 population of the suburb of DashkovoPesochnya in which it is located. The panic response in the city grew stronger: there were rumors circulating that Ryazan had been singled out for terrorist attack, because the 137th airborne assault guards regiment which had fought in Dagestan, was stationed there. In addition, the Dyagilev military aerodrome, from which military forces had been airlifted to the Caucasus, was located close to Ryazan. The main road out of Ryazan was jammed solid, because the police were checking all cars leaving the city. However, Operation Intercept failed to produce any results, the car used by the terrorists was not found, and the terrorists themselves were not arrested.

  On the morning of September 23, the Russian news agencies broadcast the sensational news that a terrorist bombing had been foiled in Ryazan. From eight in the morning, the television channels started broadcasting details of the failed attempt at mass murder:

  Every TV and radio broadcasting company in Russia carried the same story: According to members of the law enforcement agencies of the Ryazan UVD, the white crystalline substance in the sacks is hexogene.

  At 1 p.m., the TV news program Vesti on the state s RTR channel carried a live interview with S. Kabashov: So provisional guidelines have been issued for the detention of an automobile matching the features which residents have described. There are no results so far. Vesti announced that bomb specialists from the municipal police have carried out an initial analysis and confirmed the presence of hexogene. The contents of the sacks have now been sent to the FSB laboratory in Moscow for definitive analysis. Meanwhile, in Ryazan the mayor, Pavel Dmitrievich Mamatov, has held an extraordinary meeting with his deputies and given instructions for all basements in the city to be sealed off, and for rented premises to be checked more thoroughly.

  And so it turned out that the contents of the sacks were sent for analysis, not only to the MVD laboratory, but to the FSB laboratory, as well.

  Mamatov answered questions from journalists: Whatever agencies we might bring in today, it is only possible to implement all the measures for sealing off attics and basements, repairs, installing gratings, and so on in a single week on one condition-if we all combine our efforts. In other words, at 1 p.m. on September 23, all of Ryazan was in a state of siege. They were searching for the terrorists and their car and checking attics and basements. When Vesti went on air again at 5 p.m., it was mostly a repeat of the broadcast at 1 p.m.

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  At 7 p.m., Vesti went on air with its normal news coverage: Today, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin spoke about the air strikes on the airport at Grozny. So while they were looking for terrorists in Ryazan, Russian planes had been bombarding Grozny.

  The people of Ryazan were avenged. Those who were behind the terrorist attack would pay dearly for their sleepless night and their spoiled day.

  Putin answered questions from journalists: As far as the strike on Grozny airport is concerned, I can t make any comment. I know there is a general directive under which bandits will be pursued wherever they are. I m simply not i
n the know, but if they were at the airport, that means at the airport. I can t really add anything to what has already been said. Evidently, as Prime Minister, Putin had known something the general public hadn t heard yet, that there were terrorists holed up at Grozny airport.

  Putin also commented on the latest emergency in Ryazan: As for the events in Ryazan, I don t think there was any kind of failure involved. If the sacks which proved to contain explosives, were noticed, that means there is a positive side to it, if only in the fact that the public is reacting correctly to the events taking place in our country today. I d like to take advantage of your question in order to thank the public of our country for this& This is absolutely the correct response. No panic, no sympathy for the bandits. This is the mood for fighting them to the very end. Until we win. And we shall win.

  Rather vague, but the general meaning is clear enough. The foiling of the attempted bombing in Ryazan is not a fumble by the secret services, who failed to spot the explosive being planted, but a victory for the entire Russian people who were keeping a vigilant lookout for their cruel enemies even in provincial towns like Ryazan. For that, the Prime Minister expresses his gratitude to the public.