FORMER FSB OFFICER TESTIFIES ABOUT 1999 APARTMENT-BUILDING BOMBINGS...

Former Federal Security Service (FSB) Lieutenant Colonel Aleksandr Litvinenko, who lives in Great Britain, testified by satellite link on 25 July before a public commission looking into the 1999 apartment-building bombings in Moscow and other Russian cities, lenta.ru and gazeta.ru reported. Litvinenko's representatives distributed to the commission copies of a handwritten document purported to be the testimony of Achemez Gochiyaev, who is wanted by the FSB in connection with the bombings. According to the document, Gochiyaev was approached by an unidentified school friend in 1999 to rent four basements in Moscow for use as storage. He did this, and only after the two explosions figured out that the locations were the ones that he had rented. He claims he anonymously called the authorities and warned about the other two locations, preventing additional explosions. Litvinenko said that he had also been in contact with two other men wanted in connection with the incidents. On the basis of their information, Litvinenko named the late Deputy FSB Director German Ugryumov as the instigator of the explosions. Urgyumov, who headed the FSB operation in the North Caucasus from January 2001 until his death on 31 March 2001, oversaw the capture of Chechen field commander Salman Raduev and a number of other operations in the region. Officially, he died of a heart attack, but rumors have persisted that he committed suicide.