Free Blowing Up Russia by Alexander Litvinenko Page B

accused of possessing weapons and drugs and of forging FAPSI and MO documents. Not a single prosecutor or judge so much as hinted at terrorist attacks and contract killings. The accused s lawyers demonstrated quite correctly that no forgery had been committed, since they had carried genuine identity documents for agents of the secret services and agencies of coercion, and so the charge of forging documents had to be dropped. The case materials contained no information at all about the use of forgeries by the accused (which was in itself weighty evidence of the interfusion of the structures headed by Barsukov, Kovalyov and Lazovsky). The count of possessing and transporting dangerous drugs was also dropped-so that Lazovsky and Kharisov would not have to be charged under such a serious article of the Criminal Code.

Lazovsky s lawyer, Boris Kozhemyakin, also tried to have the charge of possessing weapons set aside. He claimed that when they were arrested, Lazovsky and Kharisov were with UFSB employee Yumashkin, with whom they had spent a large part of the day, that both Lazovsky and Kharisov were engaged in carrying out certain tasks for the secret services, and that was why they had been given weapons and cover documents. (When he was arrested, UFSB agent Yumashkin was also found to be in possession of a cover document, a police identity card.) However, for some reason, the question of collaboration between Lazovsky and Kharisov and the secret services failed to interest judge Elena Stashina, and representatives of the UFSB refused to appear in court, with the result that the accused were in any case found guilty of the illegal possession of weapons, and sentenced by an impartial court to two years imprisonment and a fine of forty million rubles each. When he heard the sentence, Boris Kozhemiakin said, he had been counting on a more lenient verdict.

Lazovsky served his time in one of the prison camps near Tula together with his codefendant and bodyguard Kharisov (which is strictly forbidden by regulations). While in the camp, he recruited new members for his group from among the criminal inmates, studied the Bible, and even wrote a treatise on the improvement of Russia. He was released in February 1998, since the time he spent in custody, while under investigation, was counted against his sentence.

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Meanwhile, in 1996, Russia had lost the war in Chechnya. Military operations had to be halted and political negotiations conducted with the Chechen separatists. There was a real threat that the conflict between two nations, which had cost the secret services so much effort to provoke, might end in a peace agreement, and Yeltsin might be able to return to his program of liberal reforms. In order to undermine the peace negotiations, the FSB carried out a series of terrorist attacks in Moscow. Since terrorist attacks, which didn t kill or maim had failed to make any impression on the inhabitants of the capital, the FSB began carrying out attacks which did. Note, once again, how well the supporters of war timed their terrorist attacks, and how damaging they were to the interests of supporters of peace and the Chechens themselves.

Between nine and ten in the evening on June 11, 1996, there was an explosion in a halfempty carriage in a train at the Tulskaya station of the Serpukhovskaya line of the Moscow subway. Four people were killed and 12 were hospitalized. Exactly one month later, on July 11, a terrorist bomb exploded in a number twelve trolley in Pushkin Square: six people were injured. The following day, July 12, a number 48 trolley on Mir Prospect was destroyed by an explosion: twenty-eight people were injured. Information about the Chechen connection of the terrorist attacks was actively disseminated throughout Moscow (even though no terrorists were caught, and it was never actually determined whether they were Chechens or not). Before even a provisional investigation had been conducted, the mayor of Moscow, Yury