I did the full translation last night so here you go.
No one would dare call it taynmym conspiracy.
Ten years ago Russia was shaken by a series of mysterious explosions point, resulting in the death of hundreds of people. Was followed by a wave of fear and terror, Kotra made then little-known Vladimir Putin's most powerful man in the country. But there were questions about the nature of these explosions - exciting evidence svedetelstvuyuschii that the organizers could work for the government. In subsequent years, people exposed to somneiyu official version of events, one after the silent or died. Except for one. Scott Anderson found him.
First blow up the building was a barracks in Buinaksk, which is home to Russia's soldiers and their families. Etobylo unremarkable five-story building on the outskirts, and when a truck packed with explosives blew up late at night on Sept. 4, 1999, the floors piled on each other to Deh long as do not turn into a pile of burning rubble. Under them were buried the body 64 people - men, women and children.
Before dawn, the 13th September last year, I left the hotel in the center of Moscow and went to working-class district on the southern edge of the city.
It has been 12 years since I visited the Russian capital. Everywhere set up new glass and steel buildings, construction cranes were everywhere, and even at 4 am, noisy casinos around Pushkin Square, Tverskaya work at all and was packed with SUV's and BMW. Canter was a sharp look at the enormous changes that Russia, whose economy was disperse oil dollars, has experienced nine years ago when Vladimir Putin came to power.
But this morning I went to a place in the "old" Moscow, in a small park where once stood a dirty nine-storey apartment building which was called the 6 / 3 Kashirskoye Highway. At 5:03 am, 13th September, 1999go year - exactly nine years before my visit - 6 / 3 Kashirskoye highway was torn by a bomb which was hidden in the basement. 121 occupants of the building died in his sleep. The explosion, which occurred nine days after the blast in Buinaksk, the third of four apartment house bombings in Russia in September, which killed nearly 300 people and from which the country was plunged into panic. These were among the most deadly terrorist attacks in the world, before the 11th of September. Blaming terrorists from Chechnya, the new Premier Minister of Russia, Vladimir Putin, ordered the heavy attack on the republic. Due to the success of the attacks, previously unknown, Putin became a national hero and quickly captured the full power of the Russian country. And so he continues to have this control.
Where a house 6 / 3 Kashirskoye now been neat flowerbeds. They are surrounded by a stone monument on which were cut the names of the dead and stood Orthodox cross. On the ninth anniversary of the explosion came three or four local journalists, which were being monitored in a couple of policemen standing near the car, but there was nothing to anyone. Shortly after five o'clock, a group a couple of dozen people - mostly young, probably relatives of the victims - came to put the candles and put a red carnation at the monument, but here as quickly left. Besides them, this morning there were only two elderly men who witnessed the explosion and who spoke to television cameras as it was awful, what a shock.
I saw that one of the old razchuvstvovalsya when standing before the monument, repeatedly wiping away tears. Several times he turned away and went somewhere purposefully, as if trying to leave, but could not. Every time he stopped at derevev on the edge of the park, and inevitably vosvraschalsya to the monument. Finally, I started a conversation with him.
"I lived near here," he said, "and I was awakened by the noise. I primchasya and ..." He was a big man, a former sailor, and he spread his hands helplessly over the beds. "Nothing." Nothing. "They pulled the boy and his dog. And yet. All the rest have died."
But, it turned out that the old man had personal connection with the tragedy. His daughter, son and grandson lived in the 6 / 3 Kashirskoye, and they all died that morning. Summed me to the monument, he showed them the names on the stone, desperately wiping her tears. Then he whispered angrily: "They say that the Chechens have done, but it is a lie. It was Putin's men. Everyone knows that. Nobody wants to talk about it, but everybody knows."
That's the mystery of the soul of modern power of Russia, which has not yet been resolved. During the horrors of September 1999go year, appeared angry angel Will Putin of Russia, a strong man who passing enemies of the country and brought the people out of crisis? Or, as the crisis has been fabricated in favor of Putin, as a means through which the secret agencies of Russia built its power? This question is important because, if there would be explosions that September, it is difficult to imagine how Putin could occupy the position it holds today: an important person in international affairs, and the manager of one of the most powerful country in the world.
It is strange how few people outside of Russia want the answer to this question. It is likely that several law enforcement agencies conducted issledstvia these explosions, but no one has published the results. Among the U.S. lawmakers, who have shown little interest in this matter. In 2003om, John MkKeyn adverts to Congress that "there are still credible allegations that Russia's FSB had a role in these actions." But besides that, neither U.S. government nor the American media have not shown razpolozheniya insight into this matter.
This apparent lack of interest is now spreading to Russia. Immediately after the blasts, many in Russia has publicly questioned the government version of events. These voices were silent, one after another. In the past few years, many of those journalists who were investigating the incidents have been killed - or died under suspicious circumstances - as well as two members of Parliament who participated in the research committee. Meanwhile, sozdaetsa impression that almost all of whose version differs from the official version now, or refuse to talk, or otrekslis from previous statements, or dead.
During my stay in Russia last September, I tried to talk to mngoimi - journalists, lawyers, researchers working with human rights - who participated in the search for answers. Many flatly refused to talk to me. Others reluctantly agreed, but only to hold the enumeration of certain inconsistencies in the statement of the facts, if I insisted, they admitted only that the case remains "questionable". Even the old man in the Krasnoyarsk park emphasizes constrained by the atmosphere surrounding this topic. Though he was willing to accept a second meeting, during which he wanted to introduce me to other families of the victims who did not trust the government version of events, he changed his mind.
"I can not," he said when called me a few days. "I talked with my wife and boss, and both said that if I meet with you, I end."
I wanted to know what he meant when he said "the end", but the old sailor hung up before I managed to ask. No doubt part of his self-restraint can be understood recalling the fate of the men, for whom confirmation of the conspiracy of the blast was a personal mission: Alexander Litvinenko. From his London exile, a former KGB agent who led a press campaign against the inflexible regime of Putin, accusing him every ye the crimes and corruption - but the main thing is that it was Putin orchestrated the bombings of apartment buildings.
In November of 2006-th year, the entire world watched his eyes to how radioactive poloniuma, apparently during a meeting with the two agents of Russian special service in the bar of a London hotel. Before Litvinenko died of poisoning - which took 23 excruciating days - he signed a statement in which he explicitly accuses Putin in the crime.
But Litvinenko heh worked on the case of explosion of houses alone. Several years before he was killed Litvinenko asked another ex-KGB agent to help him find the questions - a former detective of the criminal police in the name of Michael Trepashkina. These men were fairly complicated joint past - in the 90's, one was sent rasdelatsya with another - but in the end it was Trepashkin, working in Russia, who found themselves trevozhashih many of the facts of the case.
Trepashkin also provoked the wrath of the authorities. In 2003, it, they sent him to a wretched prison in the Ural Mountains for four years. But by the time I arrived in Moscow last year, it has already been released. A mediator, I learned that Trepashkin had two small daughters and a wife who is extremely wanted to he was not involved in politics. Combining these factors with the fact that his colleague was killed not long ago and asked him to prison, I expected that my attempts to talk to him will be as unsuccessful as my conversations with other oppositionists.
"Yes, he will talk," he assured me intermediary. "The only way to stop Trepashkin is to kill him."
9th of September, five days after the explosion in Buynyakske criminals detonated an apartment house on the street Gur'yanova in Moscow, in a modest south-western area of the city. Instead of a bomb in a truck, the device was hidden on the bottom floor of the house, but the result was the same - an explosion destroyed all eight floors and killed and ninety-four of sleeping residents.
And it is from the street Gur'yanova opened a general alarm. Within hours, several Russian officials have begun to hint strongly at what the terrorists from Chechnya were responsible, and the country placed on high alert. At the burden as thousands of police questioning - and in hundreds of cases, arrested - anyone resembling Chechen residents of residential homes across Russia have organized patrols. Calls for revenge ringing in all political circles.
At the request of Trepashkin, our first meeting took place in a crowded cafe in central Moscow. One of his assistants came first, and then, twenty minutes later, Trepashkin arrived accompanied by his pseudo-bodyguard, a brawny young man with cropped by hedgehog neprozranitsaemym eyes.
Trepashkin, though low, densely complicated - witness lifelong practice of various martial arts - and is still very prominent in their 51. But the feature most attracts attention is its infinitely amused expression on his face. It it published friendliness and immediately possessed, though I could not imagine that someone who was sitting across from him during the interrogation when he worked in his KGB-would likely confused.
A few minutes later we were chatting about everyday things - the unusually cold weather in Moscow at that time, the changes that I have noticed that since my last visit - and I felt that Trepashkin evaluated me, deciding how much to say.
Then he began telling me about his career in the KGB. He spent most of his career, Sergeant criminal police for smuggling antiquities. He was, in those days, absolutely loyal to the Soviet regime - and especially the KGB. Trepashkin was so devoted to the Soviet Union, that he even supported a group that tried to prevent the rise to power of Boris Yeltsin and preserve the Soviet system.
"I saw that this would be the end of the Soviet Union," Trepashkin explained in the cafe. "But even more than what happens to the KGB, with all of us for whom it was his whole life?" I only saw the impending disaster. "
And this evil has come. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia was plunged into economic and social chaos. One particularly destructive aspect of this chaos is connected with ogromnoym number of Russian officers of the KGB, who unexpectedly entered the private sector. Some began to work independently or acceded to by the fact mafiyam with whom they had fought. Others signed the contracts as "consultants" or security officials for the new oligarchs or the old Communist Party bosses, who are desperately grabbing any possible value prenadlezhashschuyu Rissua while rashvaliavali "democratic reforms" Borisoa President Yeltsin.
Trepashkin nabdlyudal for all etim with quite intimnogoy distance. Left in the FSB (Russian successor to the KGB), the investigator found that distinguish criminal ENTERTAINMENT government policy stanovitya all trundnee.
"In the case of the business," he said, "it was draining. Mafia worked with terrorist groups, but then suddenly trail led to a business group, or even government ministries. And then it was not clear - it is still a criminal case or a black operation have official sanction, and what is really means "the official sanctioned" because someone is really right? "
In the summer of 1995, Mikhail Trepashkin began working on a project that will change his life forever and lead him into conflict with the supreme chief of the FSB, one of whom claimed Trepashkin try to kill him. This incident, like many others uncovered mold of what happened after the collapse of the Union, was the breakaway southern republic of Chechnya.
By December of 1995, the annual war of Chechen rebels fighting for Chechen independence from Russia reached humiliating for Russia draws. The success of the Chechens was in fact that since the Soviet Union, the Chechen mafia controlled almost the whole of Russia criminals, so when Russia's society has become a criminal, it has played under the arm to Chechen separatists. For the supply of modern weapons to the rebels only wanted to give a bribe Rossiyskim colonels who had stores of such weapons, and money possibilities enable the Chechen mafia, which operated throughout the country.
How high-income countries this convenient conspiracy? Trepashkin got his answer on the night of 1 December, when an armed group of the FSB seized the Moscow office of the bank Soldi. The seizure of the night was the culmination of a complex operational tasks, which Trepashkin helped lead and that was to catch a certain group of bank extortion related to Chechen leader Salman Raduyev. The success was enormous: more than twenty were captured extortionists, including 2 officers of the FSB and Russia General.
But inside the bank FSBshniki found something else. In order to prevent the possibility of an ambush by bandits set listening bugs throughout the building and connect them to the car standing outside. The system was not particularly advanced, but created a question: where does this gang could have such equipment?
"In such devices have serial numbers," explained Trepashkin, "so we had them on the system and found that it came from, or FSB, or from the Ministry of Defense." It was a very weighty accusation since access to such equipment was severely limited. This meant that some high-ranking colonels were in direct collusion with the gangs, which also sponsored a war against Russia. By the standards of any state that has not been corruption, and betrayal.
But as soon Trepashkin began an investigation, the head of internal security, Nikolai Patrushev, withdrew it from the case. Moreover, no charges have been brought to the side of colonels seized Russia and almost all are caught in the bank men were released. Instead, Patrushev started a case against Trepashkin. It lasted almost two years during which Trepashkin reached boiling point. In May 1997 the first year he wrote an open letter to President Elttsinu in which he described in detail his role in the investigation, and accused the majority of the heads of the FSB, in cooperation with the mafia and even the recruitment of bandits in the ranks of the FSB.
"I thought that if the president would have known about what happens," said Trepashkin, "he would have done something. It was a mistake on my part." As it turned out, Boris Elttsin himself was very corrupt, and only the letter warned FSBshnikov on emerging issues. A month Trepashkin voluntarily left work, unable to withstand pressure from colleagues and superiors. But this does not mean that he was going to quietly disappear. That summer, he sued the head of the FSB, as well as complaints that reached even to the director himself. Then Trepashkin still believed that the honor Offices can be restored and that those that come out of the shadows and require reform. However, his insistence only further convinced the chief of the FSB that it is time to solve his problem once and for all. One of the first to whom they applied was Alexander Litvinenko.
At first glance Litvinenko seemed appropriate for the job. Returning to Moscow after a counter-terrorist operative work hard Chechen front, he was transferred to a new and highly secret department of the FSB under the name Office on analysis of crime organizations. Litvinenko did not know that this was a group of mercenaries. In his book "Death of a Dissident" written by Alex Goldfarb and Litvinenko's widow Marina Litvinenko describes a meeting with the chief in October 1997go: "There is one Mikhail Trepashkin. This is your new object. Come take his file and read it."
After reading his work, Litvinenko knew about his investigation of the Bank Soldi, as well as his lawsuit against the head of the FSB. He could not understand what he was supposed to do with Trepashkin.
"Well, it's a delicate situation," Litvinenko later quoted her boss. "You know, he sued the director and gives interviews.
We need to shut up, the director ordered. "
Soon Litvinenko claimed that his list grew and included the Boris Berezovsky - an influential oligarch and Kremlin character whom someone powerful now wanted to destroy. Litvinenko stalled and made up excuses not to perform the task.
According to Trepashkin during this period it had been committed on the edge as the two assassination attempts: having failed ambush on a desert highway in Moscow and another sniper who could not find a good sight from the roof. In other cases, he says, he warned friends still working in the office.
In November of 1998, the expected order the FSB to Trepashkin and Berezovsky was open to the public when Litvinenko and four members of his group held a press conference in Moscow and told him about the killings which they were ordered to perform. Also present and Mikhail Trepashkin.
And this, it would seem the case was closed. Litvinenko, a dissident colonels Chapter, was dismissed, but not punished. A Trepashkin, much to the surprise, won his suit against the FSB, had married a second time and got a job in the tax police. He decided to quietly serve his term and then go into retirement.
However, in September of 1999, an explosion of residential complexes will shake all of Russia's political society. These explosions also forced Trepashkin and Litvinenko to return to their dark world, this time with a common purpose.
In the middle of the mass hysteria that consumed Moscow after the explosion on the street Guryanova, early morning on Sept. 13, 1999 the first year, authorities warned podozriteshnoy activity in the residential complex on the outskirts of the city. Not finding anything strange, security inspection completed 6 / 3 Kashira about 2 am and left. At 5:03 am, devyatnadtsati-storey building was destroyed by a huge bomb and killed 121 people.
3 days later the apartment building in Volgodonsk, a town in the south of Moscow, was blown up, this time from a truck bomb, killing a man.
In Moscow cafe Trepashkin was neharahterno ugryumnym. A long moment he stared into the distance.
"Just seemed improbable" he finally said "That's how I first thought. Country is concerned, vigilantes detain unknown on the street, everywhere there are roadblocks. So as these terrorists roam so freely that they have time to arrange and enforce such complex attacks? It seemed impossible. "
Another aspect in which doubted Trepashkin was the question of motive.
"Usually it is very easy to find the motive" he explained, "or money, or hatred or jealousy, but that has led the Chechens in these attacks? Very few people think about it. "
From one perspective it is perhaps understandable. Aversion to the Chechens are very deep in Russian society and became even worse during the war, Chechnya exit nineties. The untold atrocities committed on both sides during this conflict, and the Chechen rebels did not dare to fight, or in Russia itself, or to attack the civilian population. But the war ended in 1997 that Boris Yeltsin signed a treaty recognized the autonomous Chechnya.
"So what?" Continued Trepashkin "Why would the Chechens to provoke Russia's state when it has already achieved everything they fought for?"
And yet something prevented the former criminal investigator: the new Russia pravitelstva.
In early August 1999 - only a few weeks before the first explosion in Buinaksk - President Yeltsin appointed its third prime minister in less than three months. He was a small man, with no sense of humor, almost unknown to the public of Russia, whose name was Vladimir Putin.
He was so unknown, because, until a few years ago, Putin was still a middle officer of KGB / FSB who worked quietly. In 1996, Putin was given a job in the Office of the President - the key management apparatus of patronage Eltsina that gave Putin the means to leverage or do not provide services to insiders in the Kremlin. Apparently, he had a good time: during the next three years, Putin promoted to deputy head of the Presidential Administration, and then to the director of the FSB, and now to the Prime Minister.
But while Putin was still a little-known general public in September 1999, Mikhail Trepashkin was already familiar with it. OLPS When the scandal became public, Putin was director of the FSB and personally fired Alexander Litvinenko because he incurred it. "I dismissed Litvinenko, the FSB officers because they do not have to arrange a press conference and not have to do internal scandals public."
And equally alarmed that Trepashkin, who have chosen successor Putin in the position of director of the FSB, Nikolai Patrushev. In the post nachalnika Department's own security FSB Patrushev himself Trepashkin freed from the obligation of the investigator makes banks Soldi, and he was one of those pravitelstvennyh officials, who most passionately argued Chechen connection with the explosions of residential houses.
"So that was visible, this dynamic" said Trepashkin "and it was the government encourages it. Chechens are behind this, so now we have to deal with the Chechens.
But then something very strange happened. It happened in a quiet provincial town of Ryazan, located 120 mils in the south-east of Moscow.
Among the state of heightened vigilance, which seized the country, some residents Novoselova 14/16 Str. Ryazan noticed when the evening of September 22 drove to their house white Lada. They were quite panicky when they saw two men, who made several big bags from the car's trunk and brought them to the basement before being left with all speed. Residents called the police.
In the basement, opened three white bags at 110 pounds, attached to a detonator and explosive timer. While the police quickly evacuated all of the house, rang the local FSB expert on explosives, he found that the bags contained RDX - an explosive strong enough to demolish a house. Meanwhile, put up roadblocks on all roads of Ryazan, and began a huge hunt for the Lada and his driver.
By the next day event in Ryazan became known throughout Russia. Prime Minister Putin has congratulated the residents bditelnostyu, while Interior Minister praised the recent improvement of the security forces "such as upset attempt to plow up a house in Ryazan.
All ended well be, perhaps, only this evening, two of the suspects were detained. To the surprise of local authorities, both presented the identification card of the FSB. After a little time, a call from the headquarters of the FSB in Moscow and said that the two were released.
The next morning, FSB director Patrushev went on television to announce a completely new version of the events in Ryazan.
Case in 14/16 Novoslevoy st., He explained, was not successful terrorist attack, but rather a "training" of the FSB, to verify the vigilance of society. What's more, he said, in bags in the basement was not explosive, but rather custom home sugar.
Conflicting versions of the FSB were numerous. How to reconcile the approval of the headquarters of the FSB on the bags of sugar with an analysis of the local Federal Security Service, who found the RDX? If there was actually training, why not informed ahead of the local FSB, or why Patrushev did not talked about this a half days of hunting for terrorists? Besides, why the explosions in apartment houses immediately stopped after the Ryazan? If the attacks were actually arranged Chechen terrorists, then surely the humiliation of the FSB in Ryazan inspired them to organize more.
But while these issues have already elapsed. Even while Prime Minister Vladimir Putin spoke on the evening of September 23, praising residents for vigilance in Ryazan, Russia's military aircraft were hit Grozny, the capital of Chechnya. A few days later Russia bronenosiny battalions moved into Chechnya, and the second Chechen war began.
After this event took place very quickly. On New Year 1999, Boris Yeltsin shocked the country when announced that he was leaving his post, and the decision shall enter into force right now. Thus, Vladimir Putin became acting president until that held new elections. And instead of place was once the summer, as initially planned, the elections will now take place within ten weeks. Putin's rivals have little time to prepare.
In response to a presidential poll in August 1999, Putin was less than two percent support. By March 2000, though, on a wave of popularity for his strategy of total war in Chechnya, he entered the office with 53 percent of voters. The power of Vladimir Putin has begun, and Russia will never be, as she was.
At our next meeting, Trepashkin invited me to his apartment. It makes me a little surprised - I was told that, for security reasons, Trepashkin rarely leads visitors back home - but I think he believed that all his enemies still know where he lives.
Åòî was quite nice place, except that the Spartan kind, on the first floor mnogoetazhki, surrounded by other mnogoetazhnymi towers in the north of Moscow. Trepashkin took me around the apartment, and I noticed that the only place with a hint of disorder was a small room filled with papers - almost a closet - in which he had made a study. One of his daughters was at home, she brought us tea.
With a bit shy smile, Trepashkin Inform me that he had another reason for which he rarely arranged workshops at home - his wife. "She wants choby I ceased to engage in these political things, but this morning it's not ...". Smile left his face. "It's because of raids. You know, they kicked here" - he waved his hand toward the front door - with their guns, shouting orders, the children were scared to death. It's very influenced by my wife, she is now constantly afraid that this is again can happen. "
The first of these raids was in January 2002. Late at night, a group of FSB operatives raided and searched arranged for turning the apartment upside down. Trepashkin argues that if they found nothing, but instead planted enough "evidence" - some classified documents from the archives of the FSB, nskolko bullets - that allowed the prosecutor's office "hang" with him for three serious charges.
"So they gave me to understand," he explained, "that they me alone will not leave until I" obrazumlyus.
We Trepashkin was an idea that has attracted the attention of the FSB: just a few days before the raid, he began to call people
Putin is considered to be one of the major betrayers of Russia, Alexander Litvinenko.
A service drop colonel Litvinenko happened quickly. After his press conference in 1988, where the accused OLPS in organizing the attacks, he spent nine months in prison for obvinieniyu in the "abuse of office, after which he was forced to leave Russia when the prosecution was preparing his next accusation. With the help of the exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky, Litvinenko could go and settle in England, where, together with Boris Berezovsky, they decided to make public what they thought crimes of Putin regime. Their main objective was to find out the truth about the apartment bombings.
"That's why he called," explained Trepashkin. "Livinenko, of course, could not come to Russia and he needed someone here to help in the investigation."
Easier said than done - to January 2002, Russia underwent great changes. In the two years from the time when Putin was elected president, until recently a flourishing independent press / media has virtually disappeared, and the political opposition was gradually embossed on the side of the road, losing all meaning.
One indicator of this cooling was the rewriting of the most suspicious of the official version of the blast - a training assignment, "FSB in Ryazan. By 2002, the head of the Ryazan branch of the FSB, who led the search for "terrorists" was to confirm the official version on a test mission. Local FSB officer, an expert on Explosives, who swore in front of television cameras that the Ryazan bags were real, explosives, suddenly stopped talking about all that had happened, and then completely disappeared from view. Even residents of St. Novoselova 14/16, some of whom participated in the filming of a documentary six months after the incident, which denied the version of the FSB and insisted that there was a real, seated, is now refusing to about it with anyone or talk, except to say that perhaps they all did wrong.
"I said Litvinenko, that the only way to help if I could take part in the investigation to the extent that official position," explain Tepashkin. "If I just start digging in itself, I quickly stopped."
This official position was organized at a meeting in the office of Boris Berezovsky in London early in March 2002. One prisutstvuyushih - State Duma deputy Sergei Yushenkov, undertook to organize an independent commission to investigate the explosions and Trepashkin appoint one of its members. The meeting was also attended by Tatiana Morozova, 31, left Russia and prozhivayushaya in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Morozova's mother died in the explosion on the street Gur'yanova and Russia's laws could be given access to a formal investigation, because Trepashkin recently received litsanziyu counsel, it was decided that he will officially represent the interests of Morozova and asks the court to allow him access to the FSB of the explosion at the street Gur'yanova.
"I agreed to both predlozhaniya," said Trepashkin, "but the question was where to begin. Most of the sources were unreliable as evidence of people change, so my first task was to gain access to the results of the examination."
I beg to say than do, otlichitalnoy below the official sign the investigation of explosions was a kind of rush to clean the explosion. If for example the Americans spent six months sifting of rubble at the World Trade Center after Sept. 11, approaching it as a collection veshestvennyh evidence from the crime scene, Russia's government razed the land Gur'yanova 19 after just a few days after the explosion and taken away all the debris to the city dump. The small portion veshestvennyh evidence that was collected - and not yet known whether it is mostly of - was probably locked in hranilishah FSB.
What he found, had no direct relation to the bombings, but Trepashkin found something interesting.
One of the oddities of this story was a statement by Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznev, which he did the morning of September 13, 1999. "I just received the information," he told MPs. "Tonight was blown up a house in the town of Volgodonsk."
That night, indeed apartment building was bombed, but Seleznev was wrong with the city, the explosion occurred on Kashirskoye Highway 6 / 3 in Moscow. What put the Speaker in a quandary, when three days later in Volgodonsk, in fact, an explosion occurred at home. At least one of the deputies of the Duma became suspicious.
"Mr. Speaker, please explain," asked Seleznev in the State Duma, "as you know on Monday about the explosion, which happened on Thursday?"
Instead of answering a questioner, was immediately turned off the microphone.
This leads to the suspicion that the FSB is simply confused the order in which the explosions were to happen and Inform Seleznev "news" in reverse order.
After spending almost three years in search of an explanation of this fact, Trepashkin concluded that Seleznev was wrong exception message from the FSB officer, but he would not say how he managed to reach this conclusion.
However, along with the advance in the investigation, and the danger grew ugrozhayushaya Trepashkin. One prisutsvuyushih at a meeting in London - pravozashitnik assistant Berezovsky and Alex Goldfarb to feel concerned about this threat, and appointed a meeting with him in early 2003 in Ukraine. They never met before and after the first meeting at Godldfarba left a strange impression.
"He is one of the strangest people I have met," says Goldfarb. "He was not interested in any political or philosophical aspects of that what he did. For him it was just an investigation of the crime. I even thought," Maybe he's crazy? Does he not understand what power he is opposed to? ". But then I decided for myself that he was just super honest policeman - you know like Serpico. He simply did what was right, that's all." Anyway Goldfarb chustvoval that he should at least warn about Trepashkin vozrastayushey threat, if the authorities decide to stop it. But the more he dwelt on it, the obstinately became Trepashkin.
"He did not want to hear about it," says Goldfarb. "I think he STILL believed in something that is a struggle for reform, rather than what he is now opposed to it."
However, it turned out that the first blow system was not to him. In April 2003, State Duma deputy Sergei Yushenkov, who appointed Trepashkin in his commission of inquiry, was killed right in front of her apartment building in Moscow, a shot in front of everyone. Three months later, one more committee members died under mysterious circumstances. After these two deaths, an independent investigation had been closed praktocheski - which also meant Trepashkin now
[Mangled Google Translate translation]
mainly on their own. Nevertheless, acting as a lawyer Tatyana Morozova, he soldiered - and in July 2003, he finally hit pay dirt. It depends on the other free end in the case that no amount of cleaning up after the fact can be quite a tie Off.
In the hours immediately following the bombing on the street Gur'yanova, the FSB released a sketch of the suspect, as described upravlyayuschego home. But the speed, and without any explanation, this eskiz replaced the way another man, who had long been identified as Achemeza Gochiyaeva, small biznesmena of Cherkessia, immediately fled, and logged-in concealing. In the spring of 2002-year, Alexander Litvinenko and his sodeystvovatel Gochiyaev tracked down in the distant edge of Georgia, where, with the help of a mediator, he stubbornly insisted that the FSB had set him up and he fled only because he was sure his ubyut.
Personality rights in the first sketch is more interested Trepashkin, when studying the voluminous work of the FSB Ulitsy Gurianova he could not find any copies of The seat. Eventually, he began to examine the archives of newspapers in the hope that one of them published this sketch before the FSB had time to stop their spread. I found it.
The figure showed a man with 30-odd years, with a square jaw, dark hair and glasses. Trepashkin was sure that he knew him, and that he was even arrestoval 8 years ago. He believed that it was izabrazhenie Vladimir Romanovich, FSB agent who picked up the people in the avtofurgona c electronic monitoring for gang Raduyev during the robbery, bank Soldi.
The original idea was to find Trepashkin Romanovich and try to persuade him to reveal his part in the bombing of buildings. Not so fast. How Trepashkin could determine Romanovich moved from Russia to Cyprus and in the summer of 2000, after he was hit by a car, which had disappeared, he died.
Trepashkin then found the source of the sketch iznachalchy ⎯ manager Gur'yanova houses on the street.
"I showed him a sketch Romanovich," said Trepashkin, sitting in his living room, "and he told me that the image was pravilcho are drawn, just as he described his militia. But then they took him to the Lubyanka, where they showed emy sketch Gochiyaev and insisted that this was a man whom he had seen.
With this shock, Trepashkin was going to surprise the authorities.
FSB had already long opublikvalo names of nine people who were allegedly responsible for bombings in Moscow and Volgodonsk. These bombings were the same as a pretext for another war with Chechnya, although none of the suspects was not Chechens. According to reports, the summer of 2003 is the year, five of them were dead, two were at large, and the trial of two more was nanachen for October. As a lawyer Tatyana Morozova, Trepashkin going prisudstvovat in court and predstavit sketch Romanovich as evidence to justify.
He received additional priostorozhnost. Before trial, he met with Igor Korolkova zhyrnalistom independent magazine Moscow News in detail the relationship Romanovich to dely.
"He said, 'if they are to me dobirutsya, at least everyone will know why,'" Korolkov explained. "He was scared and tense, because I thought he already knew that he was going."
Of course, shortly after meeting with Korolkov, authorities seized Trepashkin. While he was in the delay, the FSB again provela raid on his apartment, this time including a bus agents. I understand that the neighbors it was very exciting, "said Trepashkin laughing," the largest incident, s here for a long time. "
They detained him on an old backup because of the FSB ⎯ possession of firearms without a license ⎯ but the judge, obviously familiar with the cliche, srazy also dropped the charges. Prosecutors then returned to accusations Trepashkin that still considered since the last raid two years before this and for the secret documents, which, he claims he put it. That was not much, but enough. After a closed trial, Trepashkin was sentenced to four years in prison for mishandling classified material and was sent to a prison camp in the Urals.
In his absence, two men who were tried for the bombing of residential houses was charged and sentenced to life imprisonment. Announcing the deal officially closed, the government ordered the FSB to seal all sequenced documents in the case of sleduyushie Seventy-five years.
My last question to Mikhail Trepashkin was, to some extent, wasted.
We stood on the sidewalk near his body, and I asked him if, looking at traektoriyu his life for the past fifteen years, he had something to be changed.
The question was thrown out because people are in a situation Trepashkin, who fought with the authorities and lost, almost without exception, will say no: In search of justice, liberty, or in effort to change society for the better, they explain, they would have done the same way again. People in such situations, say it to yourself to give meaning to their suffering.
Instead, Trepashkin podsmeyalsya and wrinkled his face in his otlichitelchuyu smile.
"Yes," he said, "I have a lot of things changed. Now I see that trust is one of my weaknesses. I always thought that is not the system itself, but only a few bad people causing problems. Even when I was in prison, I nikodga not believe that Putin might actually be behind this. I always thought that as soon as he learns, I immediately released. "Trepashkin pulled smile and shrugged his broad shoulders. "So, I guess, a certain naivety led me to error."
I was not completely sure. I suspected that his "lack", more than naivnots, was actually something in the old ⎯ even if not in the medieval ⎯ sense of loyalty. During our first meeting, Trepashkin has given me a copy of his rezume, which consisted of sixteen pages, and the first thing that struck my eye was how he identified his numerous awards and praise for all the years of service to the state: as a specialist in the Navy as a KGB officer the investigator of the FSB. It would not normally or not strangely, he believed in earnest. How else to explain mozhcho spent years investigating properly, carefully building cases against organized syndicates and corrupt officials, and at the same time, stubbornly denying the recognition that in the new Russia, the thieves themselves and all headed?
Of course, this sense of unwavering loyalty and paralyze Trepashkin, it is the same, and prevented him from knowing his "mistakes", of the changes in life, to move away from trouble. At the same account, even change the location of our meeting, spoke about the intransigence Trepashkin, his wife returned to previously expected and immediately drove us to the street.
"Well, what can you do?" Whispered Trepashkin when we ran away, as if he did he could pridprenyat Th.
But vozmozhcho sharpening his wife that day ⎯ On September 25 ⎯ was another reason. On that day, Trepashkin was going to go on Pushkin Square to meet with a small group of supporters, where at 6 o'clock, they would have held a demonstration demanding a new investigation bombings. "Come," he said with his usual smile. "It may be interesting."
In the five years from the time when Trepashkin jailed in Russia there have been many changes ⎯ and none of them was not particularly favorable for a person in his situation. In March 2004 the first year, Vladimipa Putin was elected to a second term of presidency with 71 percent of their votes, and he ordered more deystvitetlno limit political freedom and freedom of speech. In October 2006, the year in the elevator of her home, shot to death, Anna Politkovskaya, a leading journalist in Russia who znachitelchoy degree wrote of the dark relationship between the FSB and the Chechen "terrorists". The next month, came to remove all of Alexander Litvinenko.
And perhaps the biggest upset ⎯ Russian people in this have not seen the great reasons for besspokoystva. On the contrary, with the economy booming due to the flow of money from oil, most were satisfied with the way Putin as a strong man, and his increasingly bellicose mood in relation to the outside world, passing whiff of the returning superpower.
This image has been suitably filmed in May of the year 2008, when Putin, who serve as the constitution bars a third term as president (though he remained in office as prime minister), officially handed over the reins to his personally selected successor, Dmitry Medvedev. In this case, both of them were in similar black jackets, Medvedev, dressed in jeans, it is important to pass through Red Square, looking less like chapters gosudarsta and more like a couple of gangsters. Even fierce Russia's intervention in Georgia in August of the year 2008, an act which was unanimously condemned by the West, has created a new outbreak in the Russian national pride, a new surge of popularity of Putin.
Perhaps then it is not surprising that the rally in Pushkin Square in the evening was quite a pathetic sight. Apart Trepashkin and his closest aides, can thirty men appeared. Many of them elderly, who have lost relatives in the bombings, they stood silently on the sidewalk, holding signs or faded photographs of their dead. This small circle of standing under supervision of eight policemen in the form ⎯ and most likely several others in the civil ⎯ but it seemed not necessary. From the huge crowds of people passing by in the rush hour, few people look twice at the protesters.
Looking at Trepashkin that evening, it seemed that there might be another explanation for the question why someone as he was still alive, and people like Litvinenko and Politkovskaya were dead. From part, no doubt, because Trepashkin tried not to show the index finger directly at Putin, or anyone else in connection with the bombing of houses. It is suitable to its position as a criminal investigator of the mind: you only the accused on the facts, what mozhcho learn and refine.
And of course the other part of the reason sostoit in his one-sided at the heart of bombing houses that he had to treat this case with the same tenacity with which he treated the case of a bank robbery Soldi. That was the problem of Litvinenko and Politkovskaya: they were accused of so many members of the ruling circles of Russia, that they ensure the safety of their enemies, their quantity. For Trepashkin, except for bombing buildings, nothing else existed, and if he killed the whole of Russia would know why.
Ironically, though, sostoit that the farther he advances the case, and the more it demands adherence to an open, Trepashkin be driven by a nearer and nearer to destruction. While the people behind the bombing are confident that they have won, or at least that they are sufficiently buried the past, it is relatively safe. When the crowds start to take his leaflets, then onasnost vozrostet.
And that day may soon move up. Among the international economic destruction last year, few countries have been devastated by more than Russia, and almost every day brings new popular protests: against the oligarchs, against the policy, and increasingly against Putin himself. We already can not remain long when Рyсский people will ask themselves how it all started, and remember the terrible accident in September 1999 the first year.
But that evening in Pushkin Square, did not this afternoon. That evening, the crowd has really believed in the revival of Russia, hurrying past the Trepashkin to the subway and go home, hurrying to a bright, bright future, which promised to them by their ruler.
SCOTT ANDERSON, journalist and author, who passed from hot spots around the world.
