Translated material
Anarchists and separatists
The first suspects have appeared in the Nevsky Express bombing case
As it became known yesterday, two suspects in the Nevsky Express bombing are in the pre-trial detention center in the city of Malaya Vishera (Novgorod Region). 29-year-old Andrei Kalenov and 22-year-old Denis Zelenyuk were detained on August 17 at the railway station in Malaya Vishera. The young people, known as members of the St. Petersburg League of Anarchists, were heading to the forum of the Association of the Anarchist Movement in Yaroslavl, but were removed from the train. No charges have been brought against them yet. But comrades Kalenov and Zelenyuk are already looking for lawyers for them.Meanwhile, according to operatives of the Malovishersky District Department of Internal Affairs, the forces of the local police and special services have been sent to search for completely different people - two people from the Caucasus, whose description was given by local taxi drivers. At the same time, neither the information about the detention of anarchists nor the “Caucasian trace” in the investigation of the terrorist attack was officially confirmed by the Prosecutor General’s Office yesterday.
An electric locomotive and 12 cars of passenger express train No. 166 “Nevsky Express”, traveling along the Moscow-St. Petersburg route, derailed on the Okulovka-Malaya Vishera section of the Oktyabrskaya Railway on August 13 at 21.38, approximately 180 km from St. Petersburg. As explosives experts established, a homemade bomb with a capacity of approximately 2 kg of TNT exploded under the train locomotive. The Nevsky Express carried 231 passengers and 20 members of the train crew. As a result of the accident, 62 people were injured, 16 still remain in hospitals.
As experts immediately suggested, there could have been many more victims of the crash, including deaths, if the train had crashed from a 30-meter embankment into the Chernaya River. According to experts, this is exactly what the criminals were counting on when planting a bomb 30 meters from the railway bridge. The Nevsky Express was saved from disaster only by the high speed with which it moved on this section of the road (180 km/h) - the multi-ton train, by inertia, passed the dangerous section, and only after the bridge some of the cars fell on their sides.
The prosecutor's office almost immediately regarded the incident as a terrorist attack (Article 205 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) - all people on the train heard the sound of an explosion, and a crater and the remains of an explosive device were found on the railway track. The investigation team working at the scene of the explosion included more than 200 investigators and experts from various law enforcement agencies. The Prosecutor General's Office took over the investigation of the terrorist attack.
During the week after the emergency, reports repeatedly appeared about the arrest of people allegedly involved in the explosion. However, it later turned out that none of them had anything to do with the terrorist attack. The Prosecutor General's Office only officially stated that the investigation is looking into all possible versions of the train bombing - from the involvement of right-wing radical, nationalist forces, Islamic extremist groups in the explosion to ordinary criminal showdowns. At the same time, according to operatives, the “Caucasian version,” even after the Chechen militant group Riyadh al-Salihin took responsibility for the terrorist attack (a certain person called the editorial office of one of the radio stations on its behalf), was considered only alongside with others.
However, according to the Malaya Vishera police, all the forces of the operatives are currently being thrown into searching for two natives of the Caucasus, whose description was given by local private taxi drivers. Interviewing residents of Malaya Vishera and the village of Burga, the settlements closest to the site of the terrorist attack, detectives allegedly found witnesses who testified that a week before the terrorist attack, two unknown people appeared in the region and asked taxi drivers to take them around. According to some reports, accomplices of terrorists are being sought among the Novgorod Chechens and Ingush. However, no residents of the region have been detained yet.
Meanwhile, in the Malovisherskoye pre-trial detention center, as it turned out yesterday, since August 17, Andrei Kalenov and Denis Zelenyuk, suspected of involvement in the bombing of the Nevsky Express, have been arrested for 30 days before being charged. Young people are known in certain circles in St. Petersburg as participants in the St. Petersburg League of Anarchists movement. As it turned out, a special operation to detain them was carried out last Friday morning by employees of the T center of the FSB of Russia and the St. Petersburg Organized Crime Control Department. The anarchists were captured at the railway station in Malaya Vishera, where young people were waiting for the train to Yaroslavl. The young people intended to attend the forum of the Association of Anarchist Movement taking place in this city. As the St. Petersburg League of Anarchists told Vremya Novostei, on the same day, employees of the St. Petersburg Department for Combating Organized Crime conducted searches in the apartments of the detainees in St. Petersburg, during which they seized fragments of firearms, cartridges and a substance similar to explosives. All this was sent for examination.
At the same time, people who know Andrei Kalenov were not surprised by the fact that explosives were found in his apartment. “Andrey was interested in the history of the Second World War. He had something like a digger's ID. He went to role-playing games more than once,” one of the comrades of the detained anarchist named Hakob said yesterday.
According to activists of the anarchist movement, while searching Andrei Kalenov’s apartment, the security forces refused to involve the young man’s neighbors as witnesses, who came out to the noise at the entrance and offered their services. (Andrei’s relatives were not at home, and the police allegedly knocked down the door.) The witnesses during the search, according to the detainees’ associates, were employees of the nearest police department.
St. Petersburg anarchists were also bewildered by the fact that the arrest took place precisely at the station, not far from which the terrorist attack took place. “Everyone knew that they would go to Yaroslavl. They could be removed from the train in St. Petersburg without much effort,” one of Kalenov’s comrades noted in a conversation with a Vremya Novostei correspondent. Now St. Petersburg anarchists are looking for money for lawyers for Kalenov and Zelenyuk and a new front door for Andrei’s mother.
The Prosecutor General's Office has not yet officially confirmed information about the appearance of the first suspects in the case of the Nevsky Express bombing.