| The Moscow prosecutor's office is studying the connection between the explosion on Rizhskaya and other terrorist attacks. The capital's special services yesterday announced the first results of the investigation into the explosion that occurred on Tuesday evening near the Rizhskaya metro station. It has been reliably established that the terrorist attack was carried out by a female suicide bomber. Already at night, experts discovered parts of her body at the scene of the tragedy: a head, an arm and a leg, by which experts hope to identify her. According to final official data, eight citizens became victims of the terrorist attack, not counting the suicide bomber herself. Another 46 people were injured, 38 of whom were taken to hospitals. Doctors yesterday assessed the condition of the 12 victims as serious.
In the investigation of the terrorist attack itself - who organized it and how, where and how the suicide bomber came to Moscow - the investigation has not yet been able to achieve much success. At the same time, the prosecutor’s office admitted that in many ways the explosion at Rizhskaya had a connection with other terrorist attacks committed in Moscow recently. Including the explosion that occurred on the evening of August 24 at a public transport stop on Kashirskoye Highway (four people were injured at that time). Analogies, according to investigators, can be traced mainly in the methods of carrying out terrorist attacks - as in Moscow last year at the National Hotel and at the Wings rock festival in Tushino, and in the design of the bombs. “Of course, we will compare the results in both criminal cases,” Moscow Deputy Prosecutor Vladimir Yudin said yesterday. “In a human sense, in a professional sense, apparently, such a connection should be seen.” However, as Mr. Yudin said, so far the investigation has no procedural grounds for merging the case of the terrorist attack at the Rizhsky Station with others.
According to investigators, the explosion near the Rizhskaya metro station occurred at 20.07. Its epicenter was located in the middle of a small area between the metro station pavilion and the Krestovsky department store, near two parked cars - a Nissan Almera and a VAZ-2107. Since they were distorted by the explosion and both cars caught fire, in the first minutes the operatives working on the scene assumed that the bomb was in one of the cars. But an hour later, eyewitnesses to the emergency showed that the explosion occurred next to the cars, at the place where a woman was standing.
According to the main version, the terrorist was heading to the subway. However, at the entrance, according to witnesses, she saw a police patrol checking someone’s documents, after which she sharply turned around and went in the opposite direction. A few seconds later an explosion occurred. Already at night, experts found out that the power of the bomb was approximately 1.5-2 kg in TNT equivalent. It was filled with bolts, nails and metal balls, which littered the entire space near the metro within a radius of 50 meters. “Two kilograms of TNT is quite difficult to carry around unnoticed, so most likely it was a small amount of a more powerful substance - perhaps plasticine,” said one of the detectives. However, yesterday experts had not yet established how the mine was activated. The operatives assumed that it could have been activated either by the suicide bomber herself or by her accomplice, who was nearby, using remote control.
Experts discovered the remains of the suicide bomber herself during an inspection of the crime scene late at night. The explosion scattered them over several tens of meters, and some were thrown onto the roof of the metro pavilion. Experts were able to take the terrorist’s fingerprints from the surviving hand. Moreover, unverified information appeared yesterday that the suicide bomber was allegedly even able to be identified - from a card index of people who registered in Moscow for permanent residence. A long time ago - after a series of terrorist attacks last year - the capital's authorities began to take fingerprints from all guests of the capital who arrived to stay from the republics of the North Caucasus. True, yesterday the terrorist’s data, if the investigation really had it, was kept secret.
Yesterday, the special services received a microcassette with photographs taken at the scene of the tragedy, either immediately after it, or even a few seconds before the explosion. As Moscow Deputy Prosecutor Vladimir Yudin said, the microcassette was handed over to the prosecutor's office by an unknown person, and it is possible that these photographs could be of great assistance to the investigation, since the security cameras installed at the entrance of the Krestovsky department store were directed away from the scene of the explosion.
At the same time, the Central Internal Affairs Directorate and the FSB yesterday denied the information that had appeared that the suicide bomber who blew herself up at the "Rizhskaya" station was Roza Nagaeva or Maryan Taburova - relatives of Amnat Nagaeva and Satsita Dzhebirkhanova, who, as the special services believe, could have been related to the explosion on the evening of August 24 of two passenger liners. All four of these women, as it turned out during the investigation of the plane crashes, until recently lived in Grozny and traded at the local market. On August 22, according to relatives, they went to Baku to buy goods and disappeared. Dzhebirkhanova and Amnat Nagaeva (more precisely, women who used documents with these names) were later found among the passengers of the liners that died near Rostov and Tula. In this regard, a version appeared that they were suicide bombers, and their friends Roza Nagaeva and Maryan Taburova were also recruited by terrorists and also left “on a mission.” However, the intelligence services categorically stated yesterday that the version of the involvement of these women in the terrorist attacks is still being verified and all talk on this subject is nothing more than speculation.
On Wednesday night, just a few hours after the tragedy on Rizhskaya, information came from abroad that the extremist group Islambuli Brigades had claimed responsibility for this crime. Some newspapers reported that the statement of the Islambouli Brigades was posted on one of the Islamist Internet forums; according to another version, it was received by the Arab television company Al-Jazeera. The terrorists’ message allegedly states that the explosion in Moscow was “an action of revenge for the actions of the Russian army in Chechnya.” Earlier - again from abroad - there were also reports that the Islambuli Brigades had taken responsibility for the explosions of Russian airliners that crashed on August 24. As far as is known, the Russian special services checked this information, but no statements have yet been made either to the Ministry of Internal Affairs or to the FSB of the Russian Federation. Investigators working on the case of the explosion on Rizhskaya noted that they do not have any documentary evidence that anyone took responsibility for the terrorist attack.
YOUR OPINION Konstantin FILATOV, Alexey GRISHIN |
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