 Source: HRO.org (info) In Moscow the victims of the act of terrorism that took place 15 years ago on Guryanova St. have been remembered. As a result of the explosion on 9 September 1999, 100 people died and more than 250 were injured. This year, dozens of people came during the night of 8-9 September to the memorial that stands at the location of the house that was blown up. A service for those killed was held at the chapel named ‘The Joy of All who Grieve’. This was the second in a series of acts of terrorism (following the explosion in Buinaksk) that blew up apartment buildings in Russia in 1999. Four days later, on 13 September, another bomb attack took place in an eight storey apartment building on Kashirskoe Highway, killing 124 people, including 13 children, and wounding 9. Three days after this, a truck packed with explosives blew up next to an apartment building in Volgodonsk, killing 19 people. According to the official investigation, the terrorist attacks were organized by leaders of the Chechen rebels Khattab and Abu Umarov, both of whom were later killed in Chechnya. Two others were arrested, tried and sentenced to life imprisonment. One other is still being sought, Radio Svoboda reports. That same month, September 1999, bags containing a mixture of an unknown substance and explosives were placed in the cellar of a nine-storey apartment building in Ryazan. The explosives were defused thanks to the watchfulness of one of the residents of the building. Several people were detained immediately afterwards who turned out to be secret service officers from Moscow. What happened in Ryazan that night was later said to be a‘training exercise’. Ex-FSB colonel, and later political exile, Aleksandr Litvinenko suggested that Russian secret services were complicit in the acts of terrorism. In his view, the explosions were organized in order to win support for a second war in Chechnya. Litvinenko was killed in London after having been poisoned with radioactive polonium. Officers of Russia's secret services are suspected of being responsible for his death. The Russian authorities categorically deny the accusations listed above. |
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