Prosecutor Follows the Vainakh Trail
// In the bombing of the Neva Express
A North Caucasus rebel group is being blamed for the bombing of the Neva Express train in Novgorod Region in the account of investigators from the Prosecutor General's Office. Accomplices of the terrorists are being sought among the region's Chechens.
A bomb went off beneath the Neva Express train traveling from Moscow to St. Petersburg in the area of Malaya Vishera, Novgorod Region on August 13, while the train was traveling at 180 km./h. (112 m.p.h.). A homemade bomb with explosives equivalent to no less than 2.5 kg. of TNT exploded under the train's locomotive. Sixty people were inured in the incident.
A prosecutor's investigative team labeled the blast a terrorist attack immediately, but it took some time to wok out a theory on its motives, with local nationalists and patriots and disgruntled former railway employees coming under consideration as well. Speaker of the State Duma Boris Gryzlov and Novgorod Region Governor Sergey Mitin held that the explosion may have been the activity of local criminal groups dissatisfied with the new regional leadership and police efforts to reduce criminality. That conjuncture is also being investigated by the prosecutor's office.
After talking to residents of Malaya Vishera and Burga, the two closest settlements to the site of the explosion, Kommersant learned that investigators not only obtained a description of the possible terrorist, they also found two of his “voluntary” accomplices – two local residents who make extra money using their VAZ-2107, a Russian-made small sedan, as a taxi. They told investigators that they became acquainted with a native of a North Caucasus republic a week before the terrorist act. He told the informants that he wanted to move his family to Malaya Vishera or Burga and open a business there. First he wanted to see the locales, however, and asked them to drive him around the area. The last time they saw him was the day of the explosion, when he asked them to take him to the train station in Burga. Other witnesses saw him after the explosion, on the highway near where the incident took place getting into another VAZ-2107. That car and its passenger are being searched for in Mineralnye Vody and Karachaevo-Cherkesia, where the suspect is thought to have come from.
The status of the drivers in the investigation has not yet been made clear. “They are not being held. Investigation is underway,” a spokesman for the main police department (Russian abbreviation GUVD) of Novgorod Region told Kommersant. “Their testimony is being confirmed. It is possible that they may be accomplices of the criminal.” Accomplices of the unknown bomber are being sought among the Vainakh (Chechen and Ingushetian) community of Novgorod Region as well.
Chairman of the Vainakh Chechen-Ingushetian cultural society Salam Yunusov said that law enforcement agencies are checking every native of the North Caucasus living in Novgorod Region. “They went to the houses of some, others they called in, but, one way or another, they have questioned practically all of my countrymen living in the region,” he said. Yunusov said. He added that no one had been taken into custody. “They suggested that I collect information from friends and relatives in Chechnya about anyone who came from the republic to Novgorod Region just before the terrorist act,” Yunusov said. He emphasized that all the investigators who met with him had behaved very correctly.
Several days after the terrorist act, a deputy for a Chechen field commander, Said-Emin Dadaev, claimed responsibility for the terrorist act. He called Radio Liberty in Prague and announced that the explosion had been carried out by a battalion of Riyadh as-Salihin (Gardens of the Righteous), founded by Shamil Basaev in 2002. And, although authorities have repeatedly claimed that Basaev's terrorist underground has been destroyed, the call to the radio station become more evidence of the involvement of rebels in the blast. Considering that most terrorist acts committed by North Caucasian rebels are serial in nature (the bombing of apartment buildings, the hostage situations at the performance of Nord-Ost in Moscow and in School No. 1 in Beslan, the terrorist acts on minibus taxis in Voronezh and public transportation stops in Krasnodar), the FSB has decided that there is a likelihood of new terrorist acts on public transportation. In that connection, security on railways and in airports has been stepped up.
Sergey Mashkin, Musa Muradov
All the Article in Russian as of Aug. 20, 2007
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