Posted on 07/27/2002 5:37:41 AM PDT by Boyd
MOSCOW - Russia's Federal Security Service distributed photographs Friday purportedly showing a suspect in deadly 1999 bombings with a rebel warlord it claims paid him to organize the blasts - a day after an ex-security agent claimed the suspect had professed his innocence.
The security service, known by the initials FSB, said the photos showed suspect Achimez Gochiyayev in Chechnya with Khattab, a rebel leader who was killed earlier this year in Chechnya. The photos were posted on the web site of the Russian news agency ITAR-Tass.
The FSB accuses Gochiyayev of receiving dlrs 500,000 from Khattab to organize bombings in Moscow - part of a spate of blasts that killed about 300 people and prompted the Kremlin to send troops back into breakaway Chechnya, starting the second war there in less than a decade.
An FSB official who spoke on condition of anonymity said agents found the photos in a computer that belonged to a Chechen rebel who is now being sought by authorities, the Interfax news agency reported. FSB officials declined to comment to The Associated Press about the photos on Friday.
In a TV hookup Thursday from Britain, former FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko presented what he said was a statement from Gochiyayev in which the suspect denied he organized the bombings and said that he had no ties with Khattab.
While Russian authorities blamed Chechen or other Muslim extremists for the September 1999 bombings, Litvinenko accuses the FSB of engineering them. Chechen rebels have also suggested Russian authorities carried out the explosions to create a pretext for the military action in Chechnya.
In addition to the purported statement from Gochiyayev, Litvinenko said he had shown a British forensic imagery analyst two FSB photographs supposedly depicting Gochiyayev with Khattab. The analyst, Geoffrey Oxlee, said it was impossible to determine whether the man pictured was in fact Gochiyayev.
Litvinenko presented his evidence in a video linkup with a meeting in Moscow of an unofficial Russian commission investigating the bombings.
On Friday, the commission's head, respected human rights activist Sergei Kovalyov, raised questions about the evidence, Interfax reported. Kovalyov questioned why Gochiyayev, in the purported statement, did not name the old friend on whose behalf he said he had rented space in the two Moscow buildings where explosions took place.
"They are accusing the authorities of a terrible crime," Kovalyov said. "If such a theory is suggested, it must be proven flawlessly."
Litvinenko fled to Britain in 2000 and later received asylum there. His troubles with the FSB began in 1998 when he accused his superiors of ordering him to kill tycoon Boris Berezovsky. Litvinenko was jailed a year later on abuse of office charges but was subsequently acquitted.
Litvinenko has been closely associated with Berezovsky, a highly controversial former Kremlin insider who is now a fierce opponent of President Vladimir Putin. Berezovsky also accuses the FSB of complicity in the bombings and lives in Britain to escape criminal charges he says are politically driven.
/The Associated Press/
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