originally posted 8/24/04
Two Russian Airliners Crash
Steve Gutterman | Moscow | August 24, 2004
AP – Two Russian airliners carrying a total of more than 100 people crashed almost simultaneously south of Moscow, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported Tuesday. There was no word on survivors.
Update: Traces of explosives have been found amid the wreckage of one of two Tupolev airliners that crashed on Tuesday, say Russian officials.
Full coverage in comments
Stratfor is speculating that it might be terrorism.
A personal note: I have traveled frequently in Russia (thank heavens my wife arrived home on Saturday from Russia) and this wouldn’t surprise me. If you think pre-9/11 US security was lax. Well, security in Russia is almost non-existent.
The New York Times is reporting that the plane did indeed send a hijacking signal shortly before it crashed. And Gutterman of AP is reporting the same thing.
And here:
Can anyone track down any news on this website posting?
The first plane was carrying 54 passengers and a crew of eight when it crashed in the Tula region near the village of Buchalki, the agency said, citing a duty officer at the regional center for civil defense and emergencies. The Tula region is about 110 miles south of Moscow.
The second plane was carrying 44 people when it crashed near Rostov, the agency said, citing an Inter-State Aviation Committee official. Rostov is about 600 miles south of Moscow.
Both planes were Tupolev Tu-154 jets, the standard medium-range airliner on domestic flights in Russia, other former Soviet states, Iran and parts of eastern Europe, according to the Web site Airliners.net.
In Washington, a senior U.S. State Department official said, “We are obviously concerned by the news. We’re following developments closely and trying to determine the facts.”
Russian plane crashes and another missing
Aug 24
There are news reports that one plane has crashed and another is missing in Russia. The planes were said to be carrying 130 passengers and crew. Witnesses have said that they saw an explosion on the one that crashed. There are questions on whether this is a terroristic act.
I would say they did like 10 minutes on it, with maps, and a reporter with experience in Russia talking on possibilities, but then they moved on, apparently cause they can’t get much more right now.
If you think pre-9/11 US security was lax. Well, security in Russia is almost non-existent.
Even if there are numerous people working as domestic spies and in security.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,2763,1290359,00.html
Russian planes crash with 88 on board
Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow
Wednesday August 25, 2004
The Guardian
Two Russian airliners crashed in Russia last night, killing an estimated 88 people on board, news agencies reported.
The state news agency RIA Novosti reported that two Russian planes, one heading from Moscow to the Russian resort of Sochi and carrying 44 people on board, and another, heading from the capital to the southern city of Volgograd with 42 people, had collided.
However, confusion surrounded the exact fate of the planes. Reuters quoted an emergency ministries spokeswoman as saying that two Moscow flights, a Tupolev 134 bound for Volgograd and a Tupolev 154 bound for Sochi, had disappeared from air traffic control’s radar at 22.56 and 22.59 respectively.
One was reported to have gone missing about 600 miles south of Moscow, the other 125 miles south of Moscow, the Associated Press said.
Both aircraft are the workhorses of the Russian air fleet, renowned for their lengthy service and erratic maintenance.
There was also a report last night on Interfax that eyewitnesses near the scene of the crash of the plane bound for Volgograd had said there was an explosion on board the Tupolev 134 before it hit the ground. Local officials told the agency the crash did not harm the local population. Its wreckage was found near the town of Tula, 150km south off Moscow.
Itar-Tass said the Tupolev 154′s wreckage had yet to be found in the region, raising the possibility of a mix-up. The agency also added that the authorities had said terrorism could not be ruled out as a reason for the crash.
An official in the town’s emergency situations department told RIA Novosti that the wreckage of the 134′s fuselage was scattered across the region, and that “at the moment there is no daylight, so it is wrong to talk about reasons for the crash”.
Both planes were en route to southern Russia, a region under the threat of terrorist attack in the run up to vital elections for a new president in the war-torn republic of Chechnya.
On Sunday voters will be asked to approve a replacement for Akhmed Kadyrov, the former president who was assassinated in May. There was yet no evidence, however, of any malfeasance in either crash.
In Washington, a senior US state department official said: “We are obviously concerned by the news. We’re following developments closely and trying to determine the facts.”
In Washington, a senior US state department official said: “We are obviously concerned by the news. We’re following developments closely and trying to determine the facts.”
· A bomb went off at a Moscow bus stop on Tuesday evening, injuring four people, a spokesman for the capital’s federal security service said.
The explosion had a force of about 100 grams (3.5 ounces) of TNT and shattered the glass walls of the bus shelter located on Kashirskoye highway in southern Moscow.
The four injured included a woman in grave condition at a Moscow hospital, authorities said. A spokesman for the Moscow police, said that the authorities were investigating the attack as hooliganism.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4449049,00.html
Recent Terror-Related Explosions in Russia
Wednesday August 25, 2004 12:46 AM
By The Associated Press
MOSCOW (AP) – A list of terror-related explosions in Russia since December 2002:
^2004:
^2003:
-Dec. 9: Female suicide bomber blows herself up outside Moscow’s National Hotel, across from the Kremlin and Red Square, killing five bystanders.
^2002:
- Dec. 27: Suicide truck-bomb attack destroys headquarters of Chechnya’s Moscow-backed government, killing 72 people.
has been found according to CNN 5 min. ago.
the possibilities for bribery and other acts are enourmous. I’ve seen it first hand. Although bombing a plane is a great deal different than smuggling some heroin on board and through customs.
earlier today when it was first reported, right away, as one of the problems there with transit-related security.
New York Times
In Minutes, Two Planes From Moscow Are Lost
By C. J. CHIVERS in Moscow
posted August 24 10:18 PM ET
While there was no clear evidence of terrorism, President Vladimir V. Putin ordered an immediate investigation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/25/international/europe/25crash.html?hp
atop NYT home page right now, so should be wire story soon:
NEWS ALERT
Hijacking Signal Was Reportedly Activated on Missing Russian Plane (11:32 PM ET)
http://www.nytimes.com/
Russian Passenger Plane Crashes; Another Plane Is Missing
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 12:00 AM ET
The Russian news agency Interfax reported that a hijacking signal was activated on the second plane before it went missing.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-Plane-Crash.html?hp
Russian Airliner Crashes and a Second Disappears
By David Holley
Times Staff Writer
8:42 PM PDT, August 24, 2004
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-planes25aug25,1,6855114.story?coll=la-home-headl
ines
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-planes25aug25,1,7963608,print.story?coll=la-home
-headlines
MOSCOW — A Russian airliner crashed and a second disappeared from radar moments later Tuesday night, leading President Vladimir V. Putin to order an investigation into possible terrorism.
The two planes, which left from Moscow’s Domodedovo airport, carried about 90 people, authorities said. There was no word on survivors, Russian news agencies reported.
The incidents came amid fears that separatist rebels in Russia’s war-torn southern republic of Chechnya might launch attacks before Sunday’s presidential election, which a Kremlin-backed candidate is expected to win. The election is to pick a successor to Akhmad Kadyrov, who was assassinated in a May bombing.
Chechen separatists have been accused of terrorist attacks in various places in Russia in recent years. Last week, guerrillas carried out a major raid in the Chechen capital of Grozny.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Chechen groups have claimed some terror attacks and have denied others that the Russians have blamed on them.
Domodedovo airport continued to operate, but additional security measures were implemented, Interfax reported. The stepped-up security was originally ordered after a bomb exploded at a bus stop in Moscow at about 7:40 p.m. Tuesday, the news agency said, quoting civil aviation authorities.
At least three people were reported injured in that blast, which came before the two aircraft were reported to have disappeared from radar, just a few minutes apart.
Security was also reported tightened at Sheremetyevo, Moscow’s main international airport and at other airports across the country.
According to Interfax, witnesses reported seeing an explosion on board one of the planes just before it crashed about 100 miles south of Moscow.
The Emergency Situations Ministry said a Tu-134 airliner with 35 passengers and eight crew members en route from Moscow to Volgograd crashed late Tuesday evening.
However, Mikhail Muzrayev, deputy prosecutor of the Volgograd region, who announced the crash to people waiting for the plane’s arrival at the Volgograd airport, said there were a total of 41 people on board, Itar-Tass reported.
Wreckage of the Tu-134, including the tail of the plane and parts of the fuselage, was found near the village of Buchalki in the Tula region, the ministry said. The crew had not reported any problems before the crash, the Russian news agency Itar-Tass reported. The Tu-134 was owned by Volga-Aviaexpress, Interfax reported.
The second plane was reported missing in a region about 600 miles south of Moscow. Air traffic controllers lost contact with the second plane about three minutes after losing contact with the first. The second plane was a Tu-154 with 44 passengers and eight crew on board, the ministry said.
Contact with the plane, which was flying from Moscow to the Black Sea resort of Sochi, was lost when it was near the southern city of Rostov-on-Don. Hours later that plane, owned and operated by the major Russian air carrier Sibir, was reported still missing. It had been in service since 1982, Interfax reported.
“President Vladimir Putin has instructed the Federal Security Service to launch an investigation into the two incidents immediately,” presidential spokesman Alexei Gromov told Interfax.
The security service is the successor to the KGB.
Reflecting suspicions that the incidents could be terrorism-related, Interfax quoted an unnamed Russian aviation security expert discussing the possibilities.
“Both the planes took off from the same Moscow airport and disappeared from radar screens at about the same time, all of which suggests that terrorist attacks, planned in advance, may have been involved,” the expert said.
“Experts working at the Domodedovo airport and in the area in the Tula region, where one of the planes crashed, will make a final conclusion,” he said. “What is important now is to get informtion from the scene of the crash in the Tula region quickly. An examination of the wreckage and flight recorders will help reveal causes of the crash and establish whether there was an explosion on board the plane before it crashed.”
Russian civil aviation has had a checkered past and the Tu series of planes have been especially vulnerable to safety complaints.
Volga-Aviaexpress General Director Yuri Baichkin was the pilot of the Tu-134 airliner that crashed near Tula, Interfax reported, quoting a company source.
“Baichkin is a professional pilot who regularly steers our liners,” a company source told the news agency. “The crew is experienced, and the plane is not old and performed only two flights on that day. It is clear that neither the plane, nor the crew can be blamed for the crash.”
Volga-Aviaexpress is a small regional air company that owns two Tu- 134A and four YAK-42D planes.
Russian Plane Sent Alarm Before Going Missing, Interfax Says
Aug. 25 (Bloomberg) — A Russian passenger airliner sent an alarm indicating a hijacking shortly before it went missing over southern Russia, Interfax reported.
The signal was issued at 11:04 p.m. Moscow time yesterday shortly before radar contact with the aircraft was lost, Interfax citied an unidentified Russian official as saying.
Wreckage from the TU-154 plane of OAS Sibir was found early today, Cable News Network cited Russian state television as reporting. The plane, carrying between 46 and 52 people, was near the southern city of Rostov-on-Don on a flight to the Black Sea resort of Sochi when radar contact was lost.
A second aircraft crashed in central Russia about the same time. Wreckage from a TU-134 aircraft of Volga-Aviaexpress was found in the Tula region about 180 kilometers (112 miles) south of Moscow. None of the 34 passengers and eight crew are said to have survived, CNN cited an unidentified spokeswoman from Russia’s Emergencies Ministry as saying.
(Interfax 8-25)
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=aLeYYHLRmMqw&refer=top_world_news
There are a bunch of creepy threatening Chechnyan related stories on the Kavkaz Center website Chechnya section
http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/indexr.php?raz=10
and the analysis section:
http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/indexr.php?raz=1
I posted one here on the 20th:
Group of collaborators eliminated in Southern Chechnya
http://scoop.agonist.org/comments/2004/8/21/173713/256/1#1
I wouldn’t be surprised if a responsibility claim showed up there soon.
P.S. They also have a Bulletin Board, something which I just noticed:
http://kavkazcenter.com/forum/index.php?s=6ea6561f6d86d806172c4f9ddf457e42
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/doc/HotNews.html#61168
its their breaking page-so might bear watching
S-P, first, you have a minor citation error:where you say:
The New York Times is reporting
that link is really another A.P. story; it’s just on the NYT website.
The NYT story is by Chivers, I posted it above in Reply #9, here it is the link again:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/25/international/europe/25crash.html?hp
and it was written and filed before the hijacking alert story came out,
BUT it does have some good other details (like map & eyewitness statements, and a quick phone quote from airline, quote from DC)
and he also wrote this:
Shamil Basayev, a prominent rebel commander who is considered a terrorist by both Moscow and Washington, recently threatened more attacks.
from above cited NYT’s article
* Internet terrorists may attack web in three days – experts*
24.08.2004, 20.34
MOSCOW, August 24 (Itar-Tass) – Internet terrorists are preparing to attack the world web in three days, Yevgeny Kaspersky, head of a Russian anti-virus laboratory told reporters on Tuesday.
“The information about the upcoming worldwide attack on August 26 has already appeared on some Internet sites,” Kaspersky said.
“If it’s not an empty threat, the web may stop functioning for several hours, which will cause considerable economic damage to a majority of countries,” he noted, adding that “it’s impossible to protect oneself from such a massive attack.”
In his view, the United States and western Europe might be the first to be hit by Internet terrorists.
http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=1168392&PageNum=0
interesting to say the least; I did not know this existed!
http://www.airliners.net/discussions/general_aviation/read.main/1712541/
http://www.airliners.net/discussions/general_aviation/read.main/1712541/4/
(sorry, I should’ve posted that instead).
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-08/25/content_1880275.htm
Wreckage of second Russian plane found
http://www.chinaview.cn 2004-08-25 13:08:17
MOSCOW, Aug. 25 (Xinhuanet) — The wreckage of the Russian Tu-154 airliner which went missing Tuesday night and remains of some passengers have been found in the Rostov region, an Emergency Situations Ministry spokesman said Wednesday.
An emergency official said the plane apparently had broken up in the air.
The Interfax news agency said earlier that an alarm went off aboard the Tu-154 airliner just before it went missing in southern Russia, indicating the plane underwent an attack or hijacking.
The signal came at 11:04 p.m. (1904 GMT) Tuesday from the Tu-154 airliner that disappeared in southern Russia’s Rostov region, the report quoted a Russian official as saying.
The plane, with 44 people on board, went missing from radar screens en route Moscow to the Black Sea resort city of Sochi.
The Tu-1154 airliner lost contacts at 22:59 Moscow time (1859 GMT) when it was expected to be 140 km from the city, said the report.
Almost the same time, another passenger jet Tu-134, with 44 people on board including eight crew members, crashed in the Tula region south of Moscow, killing all the people on board, said the Russian emergency ministry.
The rescuers have found the plane’s tail and were searching forother pieces, flight recorders, as well as possible survivors.
Report said the plane took off Moscow’s Domodedovo airport and headed for Volgograd at 22:32 Moscow time (1832 GMT). Communication with the aircraft was lost at 22:59 Moscow time (1859 GMT).
Witnesses said they saw an explosion on board the plane just before it crashed.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the Federal Service of Security to investigate the two incidents immediately, Putin’s press secretary Alexei Gromov said.
Meanwhile, security has been tightened at all the country’s airports after the crashes, as the Russian authorities have not ruled out terrorist attacks against the aircraft.
A presidential election was scheduled to be held in Chechnya, abreakaway republic of Russia, on Sunday, and separatist rebels there have been blamed for a series of terror strikes that have claimed hundreds of lives. Enditem
British Airways cancelled up to 50 flights in the last couple of days, due to ‘staff shortages’ and ‘technical problems’.
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040824-094209-6678r.htm
http://www.mosnews.com/money/2004/08/25/airlinemonopoly.shtml
Deputy Suggest Creating Airline Monopoly
Created: 25.08.2004 17:33 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 17:33 MSK, 13 minutes ago
MosNews
On Wednesday, August 25, following the news about aircraft crash, State Duma Deputy Valery Draganov came out with a suggestion to group all Russian airlines into one state-run monopoly. This would allow for better servicing of airplane fleet, better flight organization and more financial means to re-new the fleet, said the deputy.
“Having found out about the tragedy that happened to two of our air jets, I came to the conclusion that it is necessary to change the legislature in order to create a single airline, and I already began to hold consultations in this direction,” said Draganov. The deputy expressed an opinion that a single airline would have more financial opportunities for timely renewal of fleet of planes, their servicing and organization of flights.
“At present time every region of Russia has a large and several small airlines, and it is highly doubtful that all of them have qualified maintenance staff, not to speak of financial opportunities of buying new aircraft,” he explained.
As MosNews reported, two southbound passenger planes crashed almost simultaneously in central and southern Russian regions on Tuesday night, killing 89 people.
Flight Data Recorders Found of 2 Crashed Planes in Russia
By C. J. CHIVERS August 25, 8:47 AM ET
Investigators picked through the scattered wreckage today of two Russian passenger jets that crashed nearly simultaneously on Tuesday, killing dozens.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/25/international/europe/25CND-CRAS.html?hp
Video: Search for Clues
http://play.rbn.com/?url=ap/nynyt/g2demand/0825russia_plane_SS.rm&proto=rtsp&mode=compact
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-082504crash_lat,1,2965539.story?coll=la-home-headli
nes
No Evidence of Terrorism in Crashes
By David Holley
Times Staff Writer
10:43 AM PDT, August 25, 2004
MOSCOW — Investigators combing the wreckage of two Russian airliners that crashed within minutes of each other have found no evidence of terrorism, and various explanations remain under examination, law enforcement officials said today.
“We are considering several leads, including a terrorist act, a technical problem, and the human factor,” Russian Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov told President Vladimir V. Putin in reporting on the Tuesday night crashes, according to the Russian news agency Itar-Tass. “We have not rejected any of the leads so far.”
Earlier, a spokesman for the Federal Security Service, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said that human error appeared to be the most likely explanation for both crashes, which claimed 89 lives.
At this early stage, investigators believe the most probable cause was “a breach of aircraft regulations, which resulted, through carelessness, in the death of passengers,” FSB spokesman Sergei Ignatchenko told Itar-Tass. “As of now, no signs of terrorist attack were found on the sites of crashes of the Tu-134 and Tu-154 planes near Tula and the Rostov region.”
One explanation being examined for how two planes could have crashed within about an hour after taking off from the same Moscow airport was the possibility that there had been a problem with the jet fuel or the manner in which the planes had been refueled, authorities said.
Putin, who returned to Moscow this evening, announced that Thursday would be a day of mourning, the Interfax news agency reported.
Wreckage from the two jetliners, which took off from Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport, was found Tuesday night, the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry said.
Flight recorders from both planes were found and taken to Moscow, ITAR-Tass reported.
The tail of the Tu-134 was found about 750 yards from the main wreckage in the Tula region south of Moscow.
Pieces of the Tu-154 were found hours after it disappeared from radar near the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, the ministry said.
Immediately before disappearing, the second plane sent a distress signal indicating that it had been hijacked, Interfax reported. “There are solid grounds for opening a criminal case … because a minute before the plane’s crash, a Rostov police office had received a message from an air traffic controller … who said the plane’s crew had been attacked,” a source in the Rostov regional prosecutor’s office told Interfax.
Later, however, Interfax quoted an unidentified law enforcement source as saying the signal was a general SOS rather than a specific hijack alert.
The crashes came amid fears that separatist rebels in Russia’s war-torn southern republic of Chechnya would launch attacks before Sunday’s presidential election there, which a Kremlin-backed candidate is expected to win. The balloting is to pick a successor to Akhmad Kadyrov, who was assassinated in May.
Chechen separatists have been accused of several terrorist attacks that killed hundreds of people in Russia in recent years.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility in the plane crashes.
Domodedovo Airport continued to operate after the crashes, but additional security measures were implemented, Interfax reported. The stepped-up security was originally ordered after a bomb exploded earlier Tuesday evening, injuring at least three people at a bus stop in Moscow, the news agency said, quoting civil aviation authorities.
Security was also reported tightened at Sheremetyevo, Moscow’s main international airport, and at other airports across the country. Russian airports routinely X-ray baggage and screen passengers with metal detectors.
Domodedovo opened a special telephone hotline and started providing psychological care and medical aid for distraught relatives arriving at the airport, Itar-Tass news agency reported.
According to Interfax, witnesses reported seeing an explosion on board the Tu-134 just before it crashed about 100 miles south of Moscow.
The plane took off from Moscow at 10:31 p.m. en route to Volgograd with 35 passengers and eight crew members on board, the ministry said.
Wreckage of the Tu-134, including its tail and parts of the fuselage, was found near the village of Buchalki in the Tula region, the ministry said. The crew had not reported any problems before the crash, Itar-Tass reported. The Tu-134 was owned by Volga-Aviaexpress, Interfax said.
The Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported that pieces of wreckage were found far enough apart to indicate that the aircraft may have exploded or disintegrated while in flight.
The other plane, a Tu-154 with 38 passengers and eight crew members aboard, was reported down in a region about 600 miles south of Moscow. Air traffic controllers lost contact with it about three minutes after losing contact with the other jet. It departed Moscow at 9:35 p.m. bound for the Black Sea resort of Sochi.
The Tupolev series of planes has been a target of safety complaints. There have been at least 28 previous crashes of the Tu-154 since 1973 and 25 of the Tu-134 since 1971, according to the website Air Safety Online.
Volga-Aviaexpress General Director Yuri Baichkin was the pilot of the airliner that crashed near Tula, Interfax reported. Volga-Aviaexpress is a small regional air company that owns two Tu-134A and four Yak-42D planes.
Times staff writer Mary MacVean and wire services contributed to this report.
cause the Kavkaz Center website is down:
http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/
waz working perfectly last night!
P.S. I think maybe it’s time to revive that oldie but goodie, THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE?
and the goverment wants to take over the airlines- makes me wonder who was on those flights de dede dede ded
Note- I saw a CNN ticker earlier that said that Moscow does NOT blame Chechnya rebels
———————————————
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4449866,00.html
Russian Jet Crashes Kill at Least 135
Wednesday August 25, 2004 10:01 AM
AP Photo MOSB105
By MIKE ECKEL
Associated Press Writer
BUCHALKI, Russia (AP) – A Russian airliner crashed and another apparently broke up in the air almost simultaneously after taking off from the same airport, officials said, killing all 89 people aboard and raising fears of a terrorist attack.
Authorities said rescuers found wreckage from a Tu-154 jet with at least 46 on board, about nine hours after it issued a distress signal and disappeared from radar screens over the Rostov region some 600 miles south of Moscow.
At about the same time that plane disappeared, a Tu-134 airliner carrying 43 people crashed in the Tula region, about 125 miles south of Moscow, officials said. Emergency officials said there were no survivors from either plane.
Officials made conflicting statements about whether the signal from the Tu-154 indicated a hijacking or another severe problem on the aircraft, and there was bad weather overnight in both areas.
President Vladimir Putin ordered an investigation by the nation’s main intelligence agency, the Federal Security Service, and security was tightened at airports across the country.
Authorities have expressed concern that separatists in war-ravaged Chechnya could carry out attacks linked to this Sunday’s election to replace the region’s pro-Moscow president, who was killed by a bombing in May. Rebels have been blamed for a series of terror strikes that have claimed hundreds of lives in Russia in recent years.
Witnesses said they heard what sounded like three explosions before the first plane crashed and suspicions of terrorist involvement were compounded when officials said the Sibir airlines Tu-154 had issued a signal indicating the plane was being seized.
The Interfax and ITAR-Tass news agencies later quoted an unnamed law enforcement source as saying that the signal was an SOS and that no other signals were sent.
But Oleg Yermolov, deputy director of the Interstate Aviation Committee, said that it is impossible to judge what is behind the signal, which merely indicates “a dangerous situation onboard” and can be triggered during a hijacking or a potentially catastrophic technical problem.
Interfax reported that emergency workers spotted a fire in the Rostov region, where the Tu-154 went missing. But rainy weather hampered the search efforts and it took hours before any wreckage was found. A flight data recorder from the plane was recovered, Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu said, according to Interfax.
The regional Emergency Situations Ministry chief Viktor Shkareda told AP the plane apparently broke up in the air and that wreckage was spread over an area of some 25-30 miles. Body parts have also been found along with fragments of the plane, Interfax quoted federal Emergency Situations Ministry as saying. It said the parts were found near Gluboky, a village north of the regional capital Rostov-on-Don.
Shkareda said 52 people were aboard the plane, while emergency officials in Moscow put the number of passengers and crew at 46.
In the Tula region, rescuers found fragments of the Tu-134 jet’s tail near the village of Buchalki. Emergency Situations Ministry spokeswoman Marina Ryklina said later there were no survivors.
At about the same time that the Tu-134 crashed, the Tu-154 lost contact with flight controllers, Ryklina said. Interfax, citing Russia’s Interstate Aviation Committee, said 44 passengers and an unknown number of crew were abroad.
The Tu-154 took off from Moscow’s Domodedovo airport at 9:35 p.m. Tuesday and the other plane left 40 minutes later, state-run Rossiya television reported.
The Tu-154 belonged to the Russian airline Sibir, which said that the plane had been in service since 1982.
Quoting unnamed aviation officials and security experts, Russian news agencies said authorities were not ruling out terrorism and suspicions were heightened by the fact that the two planes disappeared around the same time.
ITAR-Tass reported that the authorities believe the Tu-134 fell from an altitude of 32,800 feet. It said the plane belonged to small regional airline Volga-Aviaexpress and was being piloted by the company’s director, and quoted dispatchers as saying 34 passengers and seven crew were aboard. Ryklina put the numbers at 35 and eight – a total of 43.
Interfax quoted a Domodedovo airport spokesman as saying no foreigners were on the passenger lists for either plane.
Authorities said the Tu-134 was headed to the southern city of Volgograd, where Volga-Aviaexpress is based, while the plane that crashed in the Rostov region was flying to the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, where Putin is vacationing.
When Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Andrey Denisov was told of the initial report of two near-simultaneous crashes, he said, “Now we have to see if there’s terrorism.”
In Washington, a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity Tuesday evening, said it was the understanding of American officials that the two Russian planes disappeared within four minutes of each other, which “in and of itself is suspicious.”
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/469381.html
Two Israelis died in Russian plane crash
By Amiram Barkat
Two passengers on the Russian plane that crashed Tuesday night on its way to the southern city of Volgograd were Israeli citizens who lived in Russia. From the passenger list it appeared a third Jewish person had been aboard the flight, but no details about his identity have been released.
The Israeli passengers were identified as David Cohen from Saint Petersburg and Eli Yaakovashvili (Yaakovi) from Moscow.
No Israeli or Jewish passengers are known to have been flying on the second Russian plane that crashed almost simultaneously on its way to the Black Sea resort city of Sochi.
Relatives of the Israelis killed in the crash arrived at the site of the crash yesterday. They were accompanied by Zalman Yoffe, the rabbi of Volgograd, who was supposed to be on the plane that crashed, but canceled at the last minute. The Israelis killed in the plane crash will probably not be buried in Israel.
A source said the Israelis may have flown to Russia to visit a mutual friend imprisoned there. The two were active in a community of former Georgian residents living in Moscow and Saint Petersburg.
They were very involved in the lives of their communities, said Rabbi Berel Lazar, Russia’s chief rabbi. He said they went regularly to synagogue and were considered generous supporters.
Rabbi Mendel Posner from Saint Petersburg said Cohen’s death was a great loss to the Jewish community there.
No worse then Moscow suddenly wanting to privatize the airline industry or that it couldn’t be terrorism wink wink I posted it because its the only names except the airline director who was piloting one of the planes. Now theres some tin foil!
on both CNN and MSNBC, and I must say, they handled it differently, much less conspiratorial tone than I got from that article: i.e., it was presented just as it is done here: that the government there is saying that there is no proof yet of anything, that they have no evidence of anything yet, and they will not state anything until they have evidence.
Also, I heard that the hijacking alert was “purported”, that it was not confirmed.
Actually, it’s possible that they could just acting professionally over there for once.
(Not like with that theatre hostage crisis!)
Wait and see (see what more Candy digs up, that is!)
_just heard on the radio that Russia now thinks it might be terrorism
_
Fear of terror in Russian skies
PRAGUE – Investigators are still puzzling over the crash of two passenger jets that flew out of Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport within 40 minutes of each other on Wednesday night and which crashed within three or four minutes of each other, killing nearly 100 people.
Sergei Ignatchenko, head spokesperson for the FSB intelligence agency, said the main scenario under investigation involved pilot or technical error. “Several scenarios are being considered. The main scenario is violation of civil aircraft regulations,” Ignatchenko said. “A terrorist act is also being considered as a possible cause, but there has been no evidence found up to this moment that it was a terrorist act.”
The director of Volgograd International Airport, Yurii Dmitriev, told journalists that he fully excludes pilot error as a reason for the crashes. “I exclude pilot error because even in the most difficult conditions arising in an aircraft of that type, such as a control malfunction or a fire on board the aircraft, crew members always have time to relay the information to [air-traffic controllers on] the ground,” Dmitriev said.
There are fears the two planes may have been sabotaged by separatist militants from the rebellious republic of Chechnya, which is due to elect a new president this weekend. Rebels have been blamed for a series of terror acts in Russia in recent years.
Separatists launched a major raid in the local capital Grozny last week and promised more to come ahead of the elections.
However, Akhmed Zakaev, a spokesman for Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov, said Maskhadov was not connected in any way to the near-simultaneous crashes.
A second spokesman, speaking to alJazeera Arabic television, said the separatist government “has nothing to do with terrorist attacks. Our attacks only target the military.”
In a recent interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Maskhadov said he had reached an agreement with radical Chechen field commander Shamil Basaev that terrorist acts only harm the cause of Chechen resistance.
The first plane, a Tupelov-134 jet bound for Volgograd, crashed in the Tula region, near the village of Buchalki, some 200 kilometers south of Moscow. All 44 passengers, including nine crew members, were killed. Some witnesses say the plane exploded in the air before it crashed, but other reports cast doubt on this.
Russian Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu said that “regarding the Tu-134 near Tula, one of the flight recorders has been found in good condition and the search for the second flight recorder is ongoing and practically all the bodies of those who perished have been found”.
ITAR-TASS later reported that all the flight and chart recorders from both planes have been found and brought to Moscow for investigation.
The small Volga-Aviaekspress airline, which owned the Tu-134, said all necessary security checks had been made prior to the flight. The company’s director, Yurii Baichkin, was reportedly piloting the plane at the time of the crash. Air-traffic controllers said they received no distress signals before the plane disappeared from their radars.
Minutes later, controllers also lost track of a second plane, a Tu-154 carrying 46 passengers, including eight crew members. The plane, bound for the Black Sea resort town of Sochi, came down in the Rostov region, some 960km south of the capital.
Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted a source saying the plane, owned by the Sibir air company, had sent out a hijack alert shortly before it disappeared. However, later the agency quoted an unnamed law-enforcement official as saying the signal had been a general distress alert.
The Tu-154 wreckage was found about nine hours after the plane’s disappearance. An Emergency Situations Ministry official in Rostov told the Associated Press that the plane apparently broke up in the air and that the wreckage was spread over some 40-50km. The fuselage and tail lay a few hundred meters apart at the edge of a forest.
Copyright (c) 2004 RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington, DC 20036
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/FH27Ag01.html
It also quoted an unnamed FSB officer in Rostov on Don as saying: “[After the poll] things will clear up. Until then, let the disasters be blamed, say, on technical fault or poor quality fuel. This is dictated by the situation.”
The Guardian
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/08/27/001-print.html
Friday, August 27, 2004
‘Something Happened Fast’ in Crashes
By Anatoly Medetsky
Staff Writer
Flight recorders from two planes that crashed just three minutes apart Tuesday night are providing few clues to investigators but indicate “something happened very fast,” a Kremlin representative said Thursday.
The crashes of the Volga-Aviaexpress Tu-134 and Sibir Tu-154 after taking off from Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport is increasingly looking like a terrorist attack, said the official, Vladimir Yakovlev.
Thursday was a day of mourning across the country for the 89 people who died on both planes. National flags flew at half-mast. Theaters closed their doors, and television channels canceled entertainment shows.
Yakovlev, the presidential envoy to the Southern Federal District, which includes a region where one jet went down, said the flight recorders “turned off immediately” in “probably the main affirmation that something happened very fast,” Channel One television reported.
He told Itar-Tass that the recorders “went out of service before the airliners fell.”
The main theory about the crashes “all the same remains terrorism,” Yakovlev said.
But the Federal Security Service continued to downplay any link to terrorism.
Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov told President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday that he could not rule out the terrorist angle.
A senior air traffic controller said Thursday that all signs point to an organized terrorist attack. “Apparently explosives rigged with a timing mechanism were somehow delivered on board or suicide bombers were on board,” said Anatoly Telegin, head of the Transportation Ministry’s Urals air traffic control, according to Nakanune.ru, a regional news agency.
“A plane can’t fall instantaneously,” Telegin said.
If an aircraft has technical problems, pilots usually have time to report it to traffic controllers, he said.
Speculation has swirled that the crashes might have been organized by Chechen rebels ahead of Sunday’s presidential election in Chechnya. A rebel representative has denied this.
In a sign that authorities suspected a terrorist act, Putin ordered the Federal Security Service, which is responsible for counter-terrorism, to investigate immediately after he learned about the crashes. Aviation authorities are usually assigned to investigations connected with pilot error or technical problems.
In another sign, Putin on Thursday ordered the Interior Ministry, which includes the police and paramilitary troops, to take over security at the country’s airports. Security had been handled by the airports.
The Federal Security Service has good reason to distance itself from terrorism theories, as an attack would deal a heavy blow to its reputation.
Details emerged Thursday about the exact times the jets had departed from Moscow and the scene at the crash sites.
The Sibir Tu-154 took off first, at 9:45 p.m., after a 20-minute delay as airport staff removed a bag belonging to a group of passengers who missed the flight.
The Volga-Aviaexpress Tu-134 took off 46 minutes later, at 10:31 p.m. The flight was delayed by 10 minutes as cabin crew waited for in-flight meals to be loaded.
After disappearing from radar screens at 10:56 p.m., the Tu-134 fell upside-down near the Tula region village of Buchalki. The tail landed about 400 meters away from the plane’s nearly intact fuselage, a Tula emergency spokesman said, Interfax reported.
The bodies of all 43 people on board were recovered Wednesday. Two were Israeli citizens, David Coen and Eli Yaacovi, The Associated Press reported.
Eyewitnesses said they heard several explosions before the plane hit the ground, but the Tula emergency spokesman dismissed a midair explosion because the fuselage remained intact, Interfax reported.
The jet’s engines might have failed, sending it spinning to the ground, he said. The fact that the crash did not spark a fire also suggests that the engines were not working when the plane crashed, he said.
NTV reported that traces of flames were found on the tail near the engines, indicating a fire might have started there when fuel came into contact with the hot engines.
Kommersant, citing unidentified counterterrorism experts, said a bomb with as little as 200 grams of TNT detonated at the tail would be enough to bring the plane down.
The plane did not send a distress signal.
The Sibir Tu-154 triggered a hijack alert before it disappeared from radar screens at 10:59 p.m. and crashed near the village of Gluboky in the Rostov region, Sibir and air traffic controllers said.
But Transportation Minister Igor Levitin, who is heading the investigation of the crashes, said Thursday that it had been an SOS call, not a hijack alert. An unidentified official told Interfax on Wednesday as well that it had been an SOS call.
All indications show that the Sibir plane broke apart in midair.
Kommersant, citing rescuers and experts, said it broke in two at an altitude of about two kilometers, and the two parts landed about a kilometer apart. The parts fell straight down, judging by the absence of traces of friction on the grass, Kommersant said.
The Emergency Situations Ministry said on its web site that passengers, their belongings and smaller pieces of the plane were found scattered in a 20-kilometer radius.
The bodies of all 46 people on the plane had been recovered by Thursday afternoon. One of the passengers was a Ukrainian, Interfax said.
Suspiciously, no relatives had called as of Thursday afternoon to inquire about a female passenger with a Caucasus-sounding last name — Dzhabrailova — on the Sibir flight, Levitov said, Interfax reported. He said his commission was investigating the woman, but added, “We have no information that she was a terrorist.”
Sibir said the cockpits of its planes are shielded by armored doors.
Rescuer Vyacheslav Starostin said the cabin did not show any signs of fire, Kommersant reported.
Levitin said the debris of the two planes was scattered in a similar pattern, Interfax said. He did not elaborate.
He also said the “human factor” in both crashes was the same but did not elaborate, Interfax reported.
Levitin said he did not see “a fatal coincidence” as the reason for the crashes because the planes were bound for different destinations and were at different locations when they fell, Interfax reported.
He said, however, that investigators have to find out what happened “between the tail and fuselage,” Rossia television reported. The tails of both planes were torn off.
The five flight recorders recovered at the crash sites were badly damaged and data could not be retrieved from some of them, Levitin said.
Investigators on Thursday were gluing together the tapes in the other recorders, said Oleg Yermolov, deputy chairman of the Interstate Aviation Committee, which is responsible for decoding recorders, RIA-Novosti reported.
Levitin said investigators hoped to be able to start decoding the recorders by Saturday.
Relatives of those who died began arriving near the crash sites Wednesday night from Sochi, Volgograd, Moscow and the Altai region, home of the Sibir crew. Levitov said relatives will be banned from visiting the sites for the next two to three days due to the ongoing investigation.
Group claims Russian plane crashes- Web site
27 Aug 2004 08:23:43 GMT
Source: Reuters
(Adds quotes, background)
DUBAI, Aug 27 (Reuters) – An Islamist group hijacked two Russian planes that crashed this week, killing at least 89 people, to avenge the killing of Muslims in Chechnya, according to an Internet claim of responsibility posted on Friday.
The Arabic-language statement, whose authenticity could not be verified, threatened more attacks.
“Our mujahideen in the Islambouli Brigades were able to hijack two Russian planes and they were successful despite the obstacles that faced them at the beginning. There were five (mujahideen) in each plane,” the statement said.
The statement, posted on a Web site which usually carries Islamist militant statements, said the attacks were in response to Russia’s killing of Muslims in Chechnya and other Muslim countries.
“Russia’s slaughtering of Muslims is still continuing and will not stop except with a bloody war. Our mujahideen were able with God’s help to deal a first strike which will be followed by other operations in a campaign aimed at helping our Muslim brothers in Chechnya and other Muslim countries enduring Russia’s atheism,” the statement added.
Russian authorities who earlier said the dual crashes may have been a freak coincidence said on Friday that traces of explosives were found in the wreckage of one plane, suggesting sabotage, Itar-Tass news agency said.
Khaled Islambouli was the Egyptian army officer who assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat during a military parade in Cairo in 1981.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L278273.htm
Also see Silence of black boxes leaves Russia in limbo over cause of double air tragedy
Explosives traces ‘found in Russian airliner wreckage’
By Jim Heintz, AP
27 August 2004
Russia’s Federal Security Service said today that traces of explosives have been found in the wreckage of one of two airliners that crashed nearly simultaneously.
The statement came several hours after a website known for militant Muslim published a claim of responsibility for the crashes of two Russian airliners, connecting the action to Russia’s fight against separatists in Chechnya.
A spokesman for the security agency, Nikolai Zakharov, said on Russian television that the traces were found in the shattered Tu-154 jetliner that crashed in southern Russia and that “preliminary analysis indicates it was hexogen.”
Hexogen is the explosive that officials said was used in the 1999 apartment bombings that killed some 300 people in Russia and that were blamed on Chechen separatists.
Although authorities today stopped short of formally declaring the crashes as caused by terrorists, another Federal Security Agency spokesman, Sergei Ignatchenko, said authorities are trying “to determine the circle of people who may have been involved in an act of terrorism aboard the Tu-154,” according to the Interfax news agency.
No results from the other crash site, of a Tu-134 about 200 kilometers (120 miles) south of Moscow, have been announced. At least 89 people were killed in the twin disasters.
Although the planes disappeared from radar screens within minutes of each other after taking off from the same airport, Moscow’s Domodedovo, Russian officials had held back from declaring the crashes to be connected with terrorism, saying that other possibilities including bad fuel and human error were being investigated.
The prospect that explosives had been placed aboard two planes leaving from one of Russia’s most modern and sophisticated airports was likely to raise serious concern about air security throughout the sprawling country.
There were no immediate indications that Russia was considering halting national air traffic, as the United States did after the Sept. 11 attacks. A duty officer at Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow said all flights were taking off and landing as scheduled.
The crashes took place just five days before presidential elections were to be held in Chechnya, where rebels and Russian forces have been fighting for nearly five years. Officials had warned of concern that separatists could try to commit attacks ahead of the elections, which are to fill the post of the late Kremlin-backed Chechen president Akhmad Kadyrov, who was assassinated by a bomb in May.
The statement of responsibility published on the militant Muslim Web site was signed “the Islambouli Brigades.” A group with a similar name has claimed responsibility for at least one other attack, but the authenticity of Friday’s statement could not immediately be confirmed.
Russian officials have repeatedly contended that the rebels who have been fighting Russian forces in Chechnya for nearly five years receive help from foreign terrorist organizations, including al-Qaida.
Friday’s claim did not refer to al-Qaida, but a group called “the Islambouli Brigades of al-Qaida” claimed responsibility for last month’s attempt to assassinate Pakistan’s prime minister-designate.
The statement did not give details on how the alleged attacks on the Russian planes occurred. The planes went down within minutes of each other after both had taken off from Moscow’s Domodedovo airport.
“Our mujahedeen, with God’s grace, succeeded in directing the first blow which will be followed by a series of other operations in a wave to extend support and victory to our Muslim brothers in Chechnya and other Muslim areas which suffer from Russian faithlessness,” the statement said.
It was not clear whether the statement claimed that Chechens themselves staged attacks on the planes.
However, Russian news agencies reported Friday that investigators were searching for information about two women with Chechen surnames who were on the planes’ passenger lists. They are the only passengers about whom relatives have not inquired, the reports said.
Chechen rebels and their supporters are blamed for a series of suicide bombings and other attacks in Chechnya and the rest of Russia over the past several years, including last year’s suicide bombings of an outdoor rock concert in Moscow and another outside a hotel near Red Square.
The crashes took place just five days before Chechens were to vote for the republic’s president, to replace Kremlin-backed Chechen president Akhmad Kadyrov who was assassinated in a May 9 bomb attack.
Officials had warned that Chechen separatists might try to carry out attacks ahead of the vote, which is part of the Kremlin’s strategy of trying to undermine the insurgents by establishing a modicum of civil order in the region.
Security analyst Andrei Soldatov said the reported Chechen connection could bring more suffering to the republic, where Russian forces are widely criticized for abusing and abducting civilians.
“The government will now be able to say that the fight against separatists in Chechnya comes under the roof of international terrorism. As soon as they say that, you can forget about human rights in the region,” he said.
New York Times
Traces of Explosives Found in Wreckage of Russian Jet
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
August 27 7:22 AM ET
An Islamic extremist group claimed its fighters had hijacked the planes to avenge the deaths of Muslims in Chechnya.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/27/international/europe/27CND-RUSS.html?hp
Video: Terrorism Blamed for Downed Jet
http://play.rbn.com/?url=ap/nynyt/g2demand/0827russia_planes_SS.rm&proto=rtsp&mode=compact
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/08/28/world/main639188.shtml
Chechen Terrorists Claim Crashes
MOSCOW, Aug. 27, 2004
Russian officials said Friday they detected traces of a high explosive in the wreckage of one of two crashed jetliners, branding it the work of terrorists, while an Islamic group claimed its suicide attackers brought down both planes because of the war in Chechnya.
At least one crash was “the result of a terrorist act,” a spokesman for the Federal Security Service, Sergei Ignatchenko, told the ITAR-Tass news agency. In Washington, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said evidence was growing that both crashes “were acts of terrorism.”
Russia’s leaders didn’t speculate publicly about who might be responsible for the crashes, which killed a total of 90 people. But officials confirmed they were looking into the backgrounds of two female passengers with Chechen names who booked tickets on the doomed flights at the last minute and who were the only victims whose relatives did not contact authorities.
CBS News Correspondent Richard Roth reports women have been playing a major role in Chechen terror — from the suicide-belted women who helped take hostages in a Moscow theater two years ago to the Chechen woman who blew herself up at a rock concert last summer.
In addition, the explosive hexogen detected on plane parts is the same type that Russian officials reported being used in earlier attacks by Chechen separatists.
On an Internet site connected to Islamic extremists, a statement from a militant group said the planes were attacked in retaliation for Russia’s war in the predominantly Muslim region of Chechnya and warned it was only the first in a series of planned operations. There was no way to check the claim’s authenticity.
The official announcement that terrorists had struck Russia’s civil aviation industry — an essential transport sector for this vast nation — prompted only a low-key response. The government avoided drastic measures such as closing airspace or grounding flights, and President Vladimir Putin made no public comment on the evidence of explosives.
Analysts said the government was trying to avoid an embarrassing admission that Chechen separatists had succeeded again in striking at Russia — just days before a Sunday election in Chechnya to replace the small republic’s assassinated pro-Kremlin president.
A Chechen connection to the crashes probably would intensify the Kremlin’s already hard line in refusing to negotiate with the separatists, although it also would emphasize the failure of the military and security services to defeat the rebels.
“Here’s the answer to how effective our politics in Chechnya have been,” Russian legislator Vladimir Ryzhkov was quoted as saying in the newspaper Novaya Gazeta.
Security analyst Andrei Soldatov said a Chechen connection could bring more suffering to that region, where Russian troops have been widely accused of abusing and abducting civilians.
“The government will now be able to say that the fight against separatists in Chechnya comes under the roof of international terrorism. As soon as they say that, you can forget about human rights in the region,” Soldatov said.
A spokesman for the Federal Security Service, Nikolai Zakharov, announced that experts had found traces of hexogen, a high explosive, in the scattered remains of a Tu-154 jetliner that went down late Tuesday with 46 people aboard.
The government previously said hexogen was used in 1999 bombings at Russian apartment buildings that killed some 300 people and were blamed on Chechen separatists. Those bombings led in part to Putin’s decision to send Russian troops back into Chechnya, which had been semiautonomous after previous fighting.
CBS News consultant Paul Duffy, a Moscow-based pilot and former head of the civil aviation authority in Ireland, says very little hexogen would be needed to down an aircraft.
“Maybe a quarter pound to half a pound — If you’re sitting beside the fuselage skin, that’d be all it would take,” Duffy said.
Both planes took off from Moscow’s Domodedovo airport, one of Russia’s most modern and sophisticated. It was not immediately clear how airport security systems could be circumvented to smuggle in explosives.
Duffy tells CBS News the planes were parked side-by-side and serviced by the same crew. The same clerk checked in the passengers to both flights.
Authorities did not discuss what searchers had found at the second crash site, of a Tu-134 airliner with 44 aboard. Officials had said previously that 43 people were on the plane.
A Web site connected with Islamic militants published a statement signed the “Islambouli Brigades” claiming responsibility for both crashes. “Russia’s slaughtering of Muslims is continuing and will only stop when a bloody war is launched,” it said.
A group with a similar name, “the Islambouli Brigades of al Qaeda,” claimed responsibility for last month’s attempt to assassinate Pakistan’s prime minister-designate, although Friday’s statement did not mention al Qaeda.
Russian officials have repeatedly said that the rebels who have been fighting Russian forces in Chechnya for nearly five years receive help from foreign terrorist groups, including al Qaeda.
The statement released Friday said five “mujahedeen” — holy fighters — were aboard each of the crashed planes.
Paul Duffy, a Moscow-based aviation expert, told Associated Press Television he was skeptical that so many attackers could get on each plane. “But there is no doubt that they had one at least on each aircraft,” he said.
Officials confirmed Russian media reports that two women passengers were being investigated.
Amanta Nagayeva, a Chechen native, bought her ticket one hour before the Tu-134 departed, NTV television said. It said she was seated in the rear of the plane near the tail, which was found severed from the rest of the fuselage. Search crews found fragments of her body Friday, Russian news agencies said.
The other woman, S. Dzhebirkhanova, originally was scheduled to fly to the Black Sea resort of Sochi, where Putin was vacationing, on a Tuesday morning flight, but she changed her ticket at the last minute, according to Gazeta.ru, an Internet news site.
Female suicide bombers with alleged Chechen connections have carried out several attacks in Moscow, including last year’s double bombing at an outdoor rock concert and another blast outside a hotel adjacent to Red Square.
Representatives of Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov earlier in the week denied any connection to the plane crashes. But Maskhadov, who led Chechnya during its 1996-99 de-facto independence, is believed to control only a small portion of separatist fighters.
MSNBC.com
Crashes: Did ‘Black Widows’ Bring Down the Planes?
Newsweek
Sept. 6 issue – Russian officials confirmed what the rest of the world suspected: that terrorism was a likely cause of two nearly simultaneous crashes of airliners that took off from the same Moscow airport one night last week. The FSB (formerly the KGB) announced that traces of the explosive hexogen had been found in the wreckage of Siberia Airlines Flight 1047, en route to Sochi, and Volga-Aviaexpress Flight 1303, to Volgograd. The planes had taken off from Moscow’s Domodedovo airport within 45 minutes of each other and apparently crashed just three minutes apart. FSB spokesman Nikolai Zakharov confirmed that investigators had “defined a circle of individuals possibly involved in conducting the terrorist act.” The two crash sites were about 500 miles apart. Ninety passengers and crew are believed to have died.
Edgy Russian officials initially tried to steer speculation about the possible causes of the crashes toward the accidental: it was suggested that mechanical problems or contaminated fuel could have brought the planes down. Western experts, citing the lack of precedent for the crash of two planes within minutes of each other, ridiculed the early Russian explanations. Speculation about possible accidental causes was undermined when reports surfaced that a radio transponder which broadcast the identification of one of the planes to controllers briefly sent out a hijack-alert message before it cut out permanently, apparently as a result of the crash. Then the FSB announced its finding of explosives residue.
A little-known Islamic extremist group called the Al-Islambouli Brigades, which previously claimed credit for trying to kill the president of Pakistan, issued a statement on a jihadi Web site claiming that five-member teams of its mujahedin had hijacked the two planes; U.S. intelligence officials were not sure the claim was authentic. More intriguing were reports that authorities were trying to determine why families had not stepped forward to claim the bodies of two Chechen women, one on each of the crashed airliners. One theory: the crashes were the work of a cultlike band of militant Chechen women known as the “Black Widows” because their Islamic mujahedin husbands were killed fighting Russian security forces. Suspected Black Widows wearing dark Islamic dress and explosives-rigged “martyrs’ belts” were implicated in the siege of a Moscow theater in 2002 and also in at least two Moscow bombings last year. Some U.S. officials caution that it may be in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s political interest to hype a Chechen connection to the crashes to justify his government’s continuing crackdown on Islamic rebels in the breakaway region.
–Mark Hosenball and Anna Kuchment
© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.
URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5853658/site/newsweek/
Al Qaeda behind Russia terror attack? UPDATED
Francis Till
29-Aug-2004
National Business Review
A jihadist group thought to be an al Qaeda cell linked to assassination attempts on Pakistan Prime Minister Pervez Musharraf has claimed credit for the recent downing of two Russian airliners, saying it used suicide bombers.
best read at link , full of links
you know, the Chechnyan freedom fight central one:
http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/
now ya know I am not a conspiracy buff, but the coincidence between the plane crashes and the Chechnyan election and all, and well, you mix a little Putin in there, with his high respect for freedom of the press,
and I just think that those technical difficulties might be somewhat induced shall we say.
Russia focuses on female ‘Chechen’ passengers after twin plane crashes (28/08/2004)
http://www.afp.com/english/newsml/stories/040828162439.k507wa2d.html
MOSCOW (AFP) Russian investigators announced that explosives were found on both planes that crashed with the loss of 90 lives, as attention focussed on the roles of two dead female passengers believed to be of Chechen origin.
The Russian press was quick to paint the pair as the latest in a line of female suicide bombers from the strife-torn Caucasus republic to strike, citing their suspected ethnic origins and the fact no relatives have come forward to claim their remains.
The crashes reinforced fears of attacks by Chechen extremists on an already nervous Russian public, with officials now suggesting Russia should copy the stringent security measures used by Israel on its flights.
While security services have made no link between the two women and the crashes, traces of the powerful explosive Hexogen were found in the fragments of both planes that crashed on flights to southern Russian cities late Tuesday.
“An additional analytical examination of fragments of the Tu-134 plane, which crashed Tuesday in the Tula district, showed traces of Hexogen,” a spokesman for Russia’s FSB intelligence service said, according to Russian news agencies.
The same substance had been found a day earlier in the other plane, which fell to the ground near the city of Rostov-on-Don at an almost identical moment. Officials have already described that crash as an act of terror.
The FSB spokesman said that state prosecutors would decide whether the Tula incident should also now be labelled as terrorism.
For the press, however, there was no doubt who was responsible for the attacks, which came just days ahead of Sunday’s presidential elections in Chechnya to replace murdered president Akhmad Kadyrov.
The daily Izvestia spoke to an official in the home town of one of the women — a 27-year-old named as Amanta Nagayeva — who told the paper that one of her brothers had been taken away by security forces four years ago and never been heard of since.
“Amanta Nagayeva had a clear motive to die: by blowing herself and the plane up she avenged herself for her brother,” it said, commenting that several past suicide bombings in Russia had been carried out by the wives or sisters of Chechen fighters.
The picture on the front page of the daily Kommersant — the eyes of a Muslim woman peering out between the narrow slit of a veil — was intended to lead its readers to only one conclusion.
Komsomolskaya Pravda also noted that the other woman, named only as S. Jebirkhanova, bought her ticket at the last moment and was the final passenger to board her flight.
ITAR-TASS news agency reported that the remains of 45 of the 46 people aboard one of the planes had been identified. The only body still not identified was that of a woman, possibly Jebirkhanova, the report said.
The presumed remains of Nagayeva, found widely scattered over the crash site, have been sent to Moscow to check for traces of Hexogen.
Mikhail Vasilev, a Russian military expert on chemicals, told the Itar-Tass agency that it would only take 50 grammes of Hexogen to blow a passenger jet out of the sky.
The media’s alacrity to finger Chechen women as the perpetrators of the catastrophe reflects mounting nervousness in Russia about attacks by female suicide bombers from the breakaway republic.
Chechen women were among those who took hundreds hostage at a theatre performance in 2002 and have also been responsible for deadly attacks at a rock concert and on a public pavement close to the Kremlin over the past year.
Meanwhile, in an admission of the urgent need to step up security on domestic flights, the transport ministry announced on Saturday that it would now be compulsory to have passengers’ passport details on their tickets.
The FSB spokesman, Sergei Ignachenko, also said Russian President Vladimir Putin had instructed the agency to look at the experience of other countries in fighting attacks on aviation.
“In fact it has been suggested we use the system of verification and control used in Israel, which is considered to be the most effective in the world,” he said.
August 29, 2004
Russians Find Explosives on 2nd Plane
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/29/international/europe/29russia.html
MOSCOW, Aug. 28 – Investigators found traces of explosives on the second of two passenger airliners that crashed simultaneously in Russia, security officials announced Saturday, confirming that they consider the twin air disasters to be terrorist acts.
Facing a menacing turn in Russia’s fight against terrorism and eager to calm travelers, the officials announced that they would increase security at the country’s airports. The new measures included having Interior Ministry officers screen passengers, starting immediately, and installing sensors able to detect the presence of explosives.
Sergei N. Ignatchenko, chief spokesman of the Federal Security Service, told news agencies that the explosive hexogen was discovered in the wreckage of Volga-AviaExpress Flight 1303, which crashed on Tuesday night outside a village near Tula, about 100 miles south of Moscow.
On Friday, investigators said they had found traces of the same explosive at the site near Rostov-on-Don where Sibir Airlines Flight 1047 crashed within minutes of Flight 1303.
Both planes took off from Domodedovo International Airport, southwest of Moscow, with Flight 1047 headed to Sochi, on the Black Sea, and Flight 1303 to Volgograd.
Investigators searching the wreckage of Flight 1303 also said they had found the remains of a 44th passenger, possibly that of a suicide bomber. That raised the death toll to 90 in Russia’s worst act of air terrorism.
The officials said nothing new on Saturday about the investigation. On Friday, the Web site of an Islamic extremist group, the Islamouli Brigades of Al Qaeda, said its fighters had hijacked the airliners to avenge the deaths of Muslims in Chechnya.
Investigators have reportedly focused attention on two passengers – both women, apparently from Chechnya – who bought tickets for the flights shortly before departure. Izvestia reported that one of the women, who registered for Flight 1303 as Amanta Nagayeva, 27, was born in the Chechen village of Kirov-Urt.
The newspaper quoted the village’s administrator, Dogman Akhmadova, as saying that one of Ms. Nagayeva’s three brothers had been seized by Russian forces three or four years ago and never seen again.
August 28, 2004
Explosive Suggests Terrorists Downed Plane, Russia Says
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/28/international/europe/28russia.html
MOSCOW, Aug. 27 – Russia’s security service announced Friday that investigators had found traces of an explosive in the wreckage of one of the two passenger airliners that crashed simultaneously on Tuesday, and declared its downing a terrorist act.
The announcement came as an Islamic extremist group said its fighters had hijacked the two planes to avenge the deaths of Muslims in the war in Chechnya and elsewhere.
The evidence of an explosive aboard one of the planes, Sibir Airlines Flight 1047, is the strongest indication yet that deliberate acts, not human or mechanical errors as Russian officials initially suggested, were involved in the crashes, which killed a total of 89 people. If that is confirmed, as is now expected, the twin disasters would be the country’s worst act of terrorism in the skies.
Officials said investigators were focusing attention on two women with Chechen names – one aboard each plane – as possible suicide bombers, raising the specter of an ominous new front in Russia’s fight against terrorism.
In the last two years women known as “black widows” and said to be avenging the deaths of husbands, brothers or sons in Chechnya have been involved in some of the Russia’s most lethal suicide attacks, including the bombing of a subway train in Moscow in February that killed at least 41 people. None have attacked the country’s airliners before.
The chief spokesman for the Federal Security Service, Sergei N. Ignatchenko, said in a telephone interview that investigators continued to analyze traces of an explosive identified as hexogen to learn what kind of device brought down Flight 1047, a Tupolev-154 that crashed near the southern city of Rostov-on-Don with 46 people on board.
He said investigators had not found explosives on the second plane, Volga AviaExpress Flight 1303, which crashed about 100 miles south of Moscow, killing 43 people.
“Without a doubt hexogen is an indication of an explosion,” he said. “The only question is what kind of form it was. Additional analysis is being conducted to determine where it was and what level, why it led to this and so forth.”
The Web site of a group calling itself the Islambouli Brigades of Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for both crashes, though it described two hijackings and made no mention of any bombings, according to reports by The Associated Press in Cairo and Reuters in Dubai.
Such statements are impossible to verify independently, and Mr. Ignatchenko declined to discuss the veracity of the claim. All he would say about the group was that it had not previously been known to operate in Russia.
Earlier this month the group claimed to have carried out an attempt to assassinate Shaukat Aziz, Pakistan’s prime minister-designate. The attack killed eight people but left Mr. Aziz unhurt.
The involvement of an extremist group believed to be behind an attack in Pakistan would be an ominous turn for Russia, linking terrorist attacks here to the shadowy networks of terrorists loosely tied to Al Qaeda that have carried out attacks around the world.
The Web site threatened new attacks in Russia, citing the war in Chechnya and what it called Russian involvement in other Muslim countries.
The latter might be a reference to the killing of Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, a separatist leader and former Chechen president who died in February when a bomb exploded in his vehicle in the Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar. Russia denied involvement, but in June a court in Qatar convicted two Russian secret agents of Mr. Yandarbiyev’s murder.
“Russia’s slaughter of Muslims is still continuing and will not stop except for a bloody war,” the statement on the Internet said, according to Reuters. “Our mujahedeen were able with God’s help to deal a first strike, which will be followed by other operations in a campaign aimed at helping our Muslim brothers in Chechnya and other Muslim countries enduring Russia’s atheism.”
President Vladimir V. Putin, for a second day, did not address the crashes publicly, leaving it to security and transportation officials to make statements.
Russia has long placed blame for the continued fighting in Chechnya on international terrorism, something disputed by Chechnya’s separatist leaders, who say they are fighting an indigenous struggle for independence. After the crashes, representatives of Aslan Maskhadov, who was president of Chechnya until Russian forces deposed him when the second war there began in 1999, denied any involvement.
The two airliners took off from Domodedovo International Airport, southwest of Moscow, both headed to cities in southern Russia. Transportation Minister Igor Y. Levitin disclosed Friday that an inspection at Domodedovo in May had uncovered violations of safety precautions for passengers and cargo, prompting demands for additional security equipment, according to the official Russian Information Agency.
Flight 1047, which was headed to Sochi on the Black Sea, sent two distress signals shortly before disappearing from radar, including one indicating a hijacking. Flight 1303, headed to Volgograd, sent no distress signals.
According to officials cited by Russian news agencies, two passengers – identified as S. Dzhebirkhanova and Amanta Nagayeva, both evidently Chechens – have drawn the scrutiny of investigators. Ms. Nagayeva, officially registered as a resident of Chechnya’s capital, Grozny, bought a ticket an hour before Flight 1303 departed. Ms. Dzhebirkhanova is reported to have exchanged a ticket for a flight to Sochi a day later, on a much larger aircraft, for one on Flight 1047 on Tuesday night.
In previous terrorist incidents Russian officials have mistakenly identified Chechens as possible suspects, only to retract the allegations later. Mr. Ignatchenko declined to discuss the investigations of the two women.
He added, though, that investigators had identified “a circle of individuals” in the case of Flight 1047 who might be connected to that crash. He would not elaborate.
The disasters occurred only five days before Chechnya is to hold an election to replace President Akhmad Kadyrov, the Kremlin’s handpicked politician who was killed in a bombing in Grozny in May. That has fueled speculation that the crashes, like other terrorist acts in Russia, were linked to the long, bloody conflict in Chechnya, now a decade old.
Mr. Ignatchenko cautioned against drawing an immediate link to the situation in Chechnya, suggesting that perhaps other motivations had been involved.
“We would not rush to say there is a Chechen link,” he said, “because there is no evidence now.”
already mentioned there in yesterday’s, as “black widows”
and the Islambouli Brigades is also mentioned,
and it says on them
Earlier this month the group claimed to have carried out an attempt to assassinate Shaukat Aziz, Pakistan’s prime minister-designate. The attack killed eight people but left Mr. Aziz unhurt.
The involvement of an extremist group believed to be behind an attack in Pakistan would be an ominous turn for Russia, linking terrorist attacks here to the shadowy networks of terrorists loosely tied to Al Qaeda that have carried out attacks around the world.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1293183,00.html
29 August
Nick Paton Walsh in Grozny
Sunday August 29, 2004
The Observer
Russian police confirmed yesterday that traces of explosives had now been found on both of the aircraft which crashed last week, killing 90 people.
Two Chechen ‘black widow’ female suicide bombers are thought to have carried out Tuesday’s terror attacks. One of the bombers was motivated by the loss of her brother, who was abducted by Russian troops in Chechnya, it was claimed yesterday.
Aminat Nagayeva, 27, who blew herself up on the Tupelov 134 plane bound for Volgograd, was from Kirov-Yurt, a village in the troubled southern region of Vedeno. Much of the current fighting in Chechnya is concentrated around this hilly region, steeped in some of the worst brutalities of the conflict.
Yesterday the Izvestiya newspaper quoted Dogman Akhmadov, head of the Kirov-Yurt administration, saying: ‘One of Aminat’s brothers disappeared three or four years ago. [According to most statements, federal troops] took him away and until now they have heard nothing of him. Now only her mother lives here and her sisters and brothers have gone to Grozny.’
Previous suicide bombers identified as the widows or relatives of people abducted or killed in Chechnya have been dubbed ‘black widows’.
The Russian media yesterday speculated that the two women may be from the part-Turk Nagai ethnic group, who live across the north Caucacus and are purported to have links to the militant Wahhabist branch of Islam.
Russian officials said the attackers could have used false or stolen documents to avoid retribution against their families. But a database of casualties maintained by human rights group Memorial refers to the death in May 2001 of Ubais Nagayev, a 22-year-old from Kirov-Yurt. The second war in Chechnya had ended in a Russian victory and ‘clean-up operations’, in which former rebels or their sympathisers were rounded up and often executed, were reaching their peak.
The fate of Ubais Nagayev, whose sister, Aminat, may have been passenger 28 on the fatal flight from Moscow to Volgograd, provides a chilling insight into the cycle of violence in Chechnya. Kirov-Yurt, where Aminat grew up, was the site of more killings three days after her brother’s abduction, when men in camouflage uniforms and masks shot dead nine civilians.
It is amid this continuing pattern of retribution and killing that Chechens will today vote for a new President. Troops line the streets of the capital, Grozny, cutting off roads in response to intelligence of attacks by separatist militants. Yesterday police tightened security at polling stations, targeted by militants to cut the turnout.
Most Chechens consider the vote, held under martial law to elect a successor to Akhmad Kadyrov, who was assassinated in May, a foregone conclusion. Kadyrov was himself elected in conditions which observers said were rife with coercion and ballot-stuffing.
Kremlin backing for Chechen interior minister Alu Alkhanov caused many to believe the only vote that matters has already been cast. Yesterday a hairdresser called Allah told The Observer: ‘Of course I won’t vote. They have already decided who will be President, and it’s much safer at home.’
Civilian airplanes shut down by air-defense missiles
This is the most likely version of the plane crashes that happened August 25. The southern direction of flights from Moscow is the air route that Putin often uses. Also, there are increased security measures used for the Ruler
2004-08-29 01:19:01
http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/article.php?id=3132
This is the most likely version of the plane crashes that happened August 25. The southern direction of flights from Moscow (especially towards Sochi, Southern Russia) is the air route that Putin often uses. Also, there are increased security measures used for the Ruler of Russia.
After the events of September 11, 2001, the US publicly announced that civilian airplanes will be shut down in the US airspace on suspicion of being hijacked.
There is no doubt that similar decision was adopted by the Kremlin as well. But in the conditions when the country is run by the KGB/FSB, such decisions are never made public. This is a state secret. This is why none of the journalists took a risk to express this most likely version of the deaths of 90 passengers of two airliners. At best, such journalists would have lost their jobs.
Even though the officials are avoiding to directly accuse Chechen militants of involvement in these plane crashes, demonstrative measures of ‘tightened security’ in airports are still supposed to direct the public opinion towards the ‘Chechen trace’ in order to divert the people’s attention from who the real culprits of the people’s deaths are.
These are the facts that speak in favor of the version that the planes were shot down by Russian air defense system. The eyewitnesses heard an explosion up in the sky. And consequently, the fragments of the airplanes were scattered across large areas. Furthermore, unprecedented security measures caused by the ongoing Russian-Chechen war virtually rule out any chances of ammunition or armed attackers getting on an airplane. The altitude of the air route of 10 kilometers high is beyond the reach of any handheld rocket launcher, which could be used by fighters of any national liberation movement of the North Caucasus.
All the rest of the official versions, brought up by the ‘authorities’, such as: poor-quality fuel, engine failures, etc. – make no sense whatsoever. For the altitude (and the time of the fall, accordingly) would have allowed the crew to report to the air traffic controller about any incidents that were happening on board the plane.
In the conditions of the total hysteria caused by the myth about so-called ‘international terrorism’, imposed by the official propaganda, the military are probably allowed to conduct a ‘pre-emptive strike’ in case a plane gets hijacked. Failure of emergency notification system about hijacking could have caused an air-defense missile to be automatically launched and to hit a locked-in target. In Russia we all are living at somebody’s gunpoint.
We are unlikely to get the truth about the real reasons of the disaster. Or we may find out the truth by accident, under the circumstances that do not depend on the state. We all remember how thoroughly the witnesses of the Moscow theater siege events (2002) were being physically removed, and we all can remember how FSB/KGB was getting in the way of independent investigation of the blasts of apartment buildings when the Second Russian-Chechen War started.
Many people in Moscow were suspicious about the sudden death of Member of Russian Parliament (Russian State Duma) Shchekochikhin, one of the initiators, who was heading that investigation.
Is it any wonder that foreigners were not allowed to rescue the crew of the Kursk nuclear submarine?
It was more of a surprise that no ‘Chechen trace’ was discovered in the wreck of the Kursk submarine. However, we all can remember how Putin discovered that very ‘trace’ in New York City on September 11, 2001.
But for some reason Mr. Bush shunned such a ‘gift’. Apparently, he did not want to be looking that stupid in the eyes of his voters.
Mikhas Kukobaka, dissident and human rights activists, Moscow, Russia.
Department of Correspondence,
Kavkaz-Center
2004-08-29 01:19:01
—–
Why has Shabalkin been quiet?
After all kinds of sources from East to West dumped out a whole bunch of versions about the plane crashes in Russia, Russian authorities started concocting their own story out of this hodgepodge, as if they were picking..
2004-08-29 01:25:44
http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/article.php?id=3131
After all kinds of sources from East to West dumped out a whole bunch of versions about the plane crashes in Russia, Russian authorities started concocting their own story out of this hodgepodge, as if they were picking and adding certain ingredients when making their special dish.
Russian secret services are playing the role of a chef, and the end result will be whatever they will find convenient. Each ingredient of that dish has its own term and its own dose.
First they started to get worried about a female passenger whose relatives did not look for her. Then they recalled about another passenger (there were two planes, you know), and nobody was wondering what happened to her either. Their Caucasus last names were supposed to imply their Chechen ethnic background. The authorities started looking for the dead bodies of these two women and they barely discovered them at the very last moment when everybody else was already identified.
Dead bodies of other passengers were sent to be buried, but these ones were sent to examination in order to discover traces of hexogen, which were immediately discovered among the fragments of the planes that were not even picked up. All in all, you can hardly find any faults in the investigation, but that investigation is worth being called a high-quality detective story. Next it will be discovered that the women were linked to terrorists, and the culminating point will be a big story about a training camp for female suicide bombers.
Let’s take into account that the official version can never be discrediting the Russian leadership at all. Then there must be something more serious that has to be concealed and there must be some hints that the planes crashed because of the attack by already mentioned ‘female terrorists’, – this is the story that the Kremlin will benefit from at the moment.
The version sounds pretty believable, but there is one snag to it: how did they manage to blow the planes up all at the same time? If we assume that time bombs were used, which were set for the same time and which were handed to the suicide bombers before the departure, then it is not clear what’s the sense of doing that since the kamikazes had the explosives on them. It’s just extra risk to smuggle a clockwork mechanism on a plane, while all that a kamikaze has to do is just connect the wires.
Different times of departures and times of explosions, when one of the planes was already ready to land, and absence of communication between the terrorists are ruling out any possibility of arranging to synchronize the two blasts.
The only version that comes to mind in this case is the version that both airplanes were shot down by air defense missiles. It is hard to imagine any other version of how the two planes were hit at the same time at such a high altitude and at such a distance from each other. But the Russian side will never even mention this version, and what’s more, it will be refusing to have anything to do with it, like it happened during the ‘training exercise’ in Ryazan (when FSB/KGB got caught planting explosives under an apartment building) or with ‘harmless’ combat gas during the Moscow theater siege in 1992.
You can’t rule out the version that suicide bombers may be behind this act or that some explosives were planted into the airplanes. Even if they were Chechens who are not acting on the orders of the Chechen military command, still, compared to what Russian army is doing in Chechnya, it is quite natural that there may be hundreds if not thousands of people who will to deal a blow to Russia any way they can. Then it will be considered revenge, but not terrorism.
Besides, if there were even one military person on each of these planes, Russian secret agents or soldiers who fought in Chechnya, then this is where the term could be applied, which even Russia’s critics in the West liked and by which they characterize Russia’s actions in Chechnya: disproportionate use of force, but no terrorism at all.
However, in this particular case it all looks like we just witnessed a new ‘Nord-Ost’ (siege of Moscow theater in 2002). Most likely the planes were hijacked and when they were up in the air, some demands could have been made to the Russian government. Putin issued the order to shoot the planes down, and air defense forces were used. This is where the denial of anything staring with C was coming from a day after the disaster, and this is the reason for the attempt to blame it all on Russian negligence.
Apparently they figured that it was like in that joke where the defendant tells the judge about how “the victim slipped, fell on the knife, and the same thing happened fifteen times over and over”. And they thought that Russians might not like Putin’s overly ‘friendly pre-election’ attitude towards Chechens. And this is why they decided to get the ‘kamikazes’ of proper ethnic background involved.
Russian spokesman for the war in the North Caucasus Shabalkin has been quiet for a few days, due to some strange set of circumstances. He is probably on some special assignment. So let’s wait for his coming report about «discovery of a training camp of militants with a camouflaged dummy of a TU-154 plane, where female suicide bombers were being trained on flight simulators from Microsoft».
Sirajin Sattayev,
for Kavkaz-Center
2004-08-29 01:25:44
http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/printout/0,13155,901040906-689393,00.html
September 6, 2004 | Vol. 164, No. 9
The Black Widows’ Revenge
After the terror bombing of two airliners in Russia, the Kremlin tries to face up to a new Chechen tactic
BY PAUL QUINN-JUDGE | MOSCOW
For three days after the planes fell from the sky, the Kremlin seemed to be in denial about the cause. Two aircraft left Tuesday night from the same Moscow airport, and dropped off the radar screens within 60 seconds of each other. At 10.53 p.m. traffic controllers lost contact with Flight 1047, a Siberia Airlines flight from Moscow to the Black Sea resort of Sochi. A minute later, Volga-Aviaexpress Flight 1303 from Moscow to Volgograd disappeared. The wreckage of the planes was quickly found. In all, at least 90 people had been killed.
The massive, near-simultaneous nature of the catastrophes was only the first clue that this was terrorism. Villagers in the Tula region, where 1303 fell, heard explosions before the crash. Siberia Airlines said 1047 had put out a “hijack alarm” as it went down. To a country that has become used to terror attacks large and small, the culprits seemed obvious: the Chechens again. Elections for Chechnya’s President — replacing Akhmad Kadyrov, blown up last May — were due in a few days, and had been denounced by the rebels as a farce. Chechen guerrillas had demonstrated their power by occupying parts of the republic’s capital, Grozny, a few days earlier.
The Kremlin did not see it that way. “There are no signs of terrorism,” the chief spokesman of the Federal Security Service (FSB), Sergei Ignatchenko, insisted last Wednesday. Transport Minister Igor Levitin dismissed the idea that the tragedies might be linked. “They belong to different air companies, and were flying to different locations,” he told journalists. Meanwhile, President Vladimir Putin appeared on state TV, discussing the harvest and the new school year.
By Friday, the official line was unraveling. The FSB soon confirmed what Russian security experts had suspected from the start — a powerful explosive, hexogen, had been found in the wreckage of both planes. As little as 400 g of the explosive powder would be enough to bring down a plane, says Adolf Mishuyev, an explosives expert who is involved in the crash investigation.
FSB sources told TIME they had no doubt Chechen terrorists were behind the blasts, and voiced frustration with the inefficiency of their own counterterrorism efforts. Pro-separatist Chechens contacted by TIME said they had no direct knowledge, but believed a single suicide bomber had brought down each plane. Authorities lasered in on a Chechen-sounding name on each flight manifest; no relative or friend had inquired into their fates. A passenger named Nagayeva was said to be the last person to buy a ticket for Flight 1303. The remains of the other women passenger, named Dzhebirkhanova, were found in the wreckage of Flight 1047. Though the exact identities and home villages of the two women have not been confirmed, the Russian media has already dubbed them “black widows,” shorthand
Analysis tells us it was hexogen
– NIKOLAI ZAKHAROV, spokesman, Federal Security Service
for young Chechen women who become suicide bombers to avenge husbands, brothers and fathers killed by Russians over the past four years.
Both FSB and Chechen sources told Time that a group of Chechen fighters has been in Moscow in recent weeks, probably reconnoitering or preparing for an attack. A representative of Aslan Maskhadov, the Chechen President whom Russia overthrew in 2000, denied any link to the bombings, but the Islambouli Brigades, a little-known group that claims to be linked to al-Qaeda, said it had carried them out in revenge against Russian policies in Chechnya.
The attacks appear to be the next grim, logical step in the escalation of the Chechnya war. After the Moscow theater siege of 2002, when 30 to 40 guerrillas took more than 800 people hostage before being killed, some Chechen fighters were deeply critical of what they called the inefficient use of potential suicide bombers. Instead of concentrating all the fighters in the theater, they said, the rebel leaders should have distributed them across Moscow and then detonated them one by one to spread the terror. Last week’s bombings suggest that Chechen rebels have embraced this more efficient form of atrocity.
The Kremlin’s temporary state of denial over the attacks isn’t new. President Putin is perennially caught between the need to reinforce his government’s image as a powerful, competent Russian state, and the less flattering reality suggested by its inability to stop the Chechen guerrillas. By clamping down on press coverage of the war in Chechnya, Putin has been trying to claim victory there. But planes falling out of the Russian sky tell a different story.
UPI Intelligence Watch
By John C. K. Daly and Martin Sieff
UPI Senior News Analyst
Washington, DC, Sep. 7 (UPI) — Russians suspect al-Qaida link to plane bombings
Russian intelligence analysts say there is a strong link between al-Qaida and the Islambuli Brigades, which claimed credit for the bombing of two Russian airliners and the deadly attack outside the Moscow subway last week. Nearly 100 people were killed in the three attacks, 89 of them in the crashes of the Tupolev Tu-134 and Tu-154 airliners and the other 10 in the Metro train bombing.
Russian media reports, reflecting official assessments, have been playing up the links between Islambuli and the Tanzim al-Jihad Islamist underground in Egypt that pulled off the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981. The Russians agree with Professor Nizar Hamza, an expert on Islamist extremist groups in the American University in Beirut, that the brigades were named in honor of Egyptian Army Lt. Khaled Islambuli who led the cell that gunned down Sadat at an Oct. 6, 1981, rally commemorating his role in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida’s top planner, believed by the United States as well as Russian intelligence experts to be far more active and important in its operational planning than Osama bin Laden, was also active in the Tanzim.
However, many experts on Islamist terrorism believe that this alleged connection is a strained one because al-Qaida is a Wahhabi movement whereas Chechen guerrilla groups appear to be overwhelmingly motivated by direct nationalist and secessionist ambitions.
Nevertheless, Israeli intelligence analysts are eager to link the Islambuli Brigades — widely believed tied to Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev — to al-Qaida.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has long sought to boost Israel’s diplomatic and security ties with Russia. Presenting Russia and Israel as targets of the same enemy is a way to try and do just that. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, spent Monday in Jerusalem meeting Israeli officials. But so far cautious, canny Putin has not snapped at the bait.
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040907-114118-1886r.htm