Death of a Dissident (49 page)

For years there had been allegations that the FSB maintained relations with the Barayev clan. Could it have known about the planned attack?

How could the police have overlooked the arrival of some fifty terrorists in downtown Moscow, with tons of weapons, ammunition, and explosives?

Why were all the incapacitated terrorists, who offered no resistance and could have provided valuable information, shot execution-style?

Why had the terrorists not set off their waist-belt bombs, even though it took ten minutes for the gas to take effect? Were there any explosives in the building in the first place?

Why was the gas used without any antidote on hand, leading to the death of 137 hostages?

Upon his return to Moscow, Kovalyov announced that the Commission would expand its terms of reference to the controversial aspects of the theater siege. “We will look carefully into Berezovsky’s questions, and will perhaps add some of our own,” he declared. In the meantime, the IFCL added another NGO to its list of sponsored projects: the association of relatives of victims of the theater siege, who wanted the government to respond to the same set of questions and planned to pursue it in the courts.

Within weeks, new information surfaced that made the circumstances surrounding the theater siege even more suspicious. In the first days of April Yushenkov visited London. He met with Boris to discuss Liberal Russia. He also met with Sasha Litvinenko, who gave him what has later become known as “the Terkibayev file.”

The information came from Chechen sources via Akhmed Zakayev, who by then was living in London, fighting a Russian extradition request. It turned out that one of the Moscow theater terrorists had survived. His name was Khanpash Terkibayev; he was mentioned in the list of terrorists published in the media on October 25, the day before FSB commandos stormed the theater. Terkibayev was a known figure in Chechnya, a suspected FSB agent, who had worked in Maskhadov’s press office in 2000. In 2001 he went to fight with the rebels. On two documented instances, in April 2001 and March 2002, he had been detained by federal forces and then miraculously released. The report of his presence among the theater terrorists was a surprise to Zakayev, who had assumed that he had gone to work for the Russians. Subsequent inquiries established that shortly after the siege, in November, Terkibayev surfaced in Baku, Azerbaijan, where he tried to infiltrate Chechen émigré groups. He bragged about “being in the theater.” He was exposed as an agent provocateur and returned to Moscow. Then, at the end of March, he was spotted in Strasbourg among a group of pro-Russian Chechens whom the Kremlin brought to the Council of Europe to promote the controversial March 23 referendum in Chechnya, ratifying a new constitution. Critics charged that the vote was suspect.

Upon return from London Yushenkov passed the Terkibayev file to Anna Politkovskaya, the Chechnya correspondent for
Novaya Gazeta
, who knew the intricate world of Chechen clans better then anyone. During the hostage crisis, she was in the theater and had interviewed Barayev, the leader of the terrorists. Throughout the crisis she passed their messages to the authorities and later wrote extensively about the episode. She was best suited to investigate the Terkibayev mystery.

Yushenkov was shot on April 17. Ten days later Politkovskaya’s article appeared. She managed to find Terkibayev and get an interview from him. When, some months later, I asked Politkovskaya why she thought he agreed to talk, she could only attribute it to his vanity; after all, among Chechens, being interviewed by Politkovskaya was a status symbol.

Terkibayev confirmed that he was in the theater. He said he had
guided the terror group through the streets of Moscow, entered the building with them, and left just before the assault. He boasted that he was an agent of the Russian secret service and a consultant for the Kremlin administration. His role was to report on the terrorist group’s activities. In the story, Politkovskaya directly alleged that at some level, the authorities must have known of the hostage seizure before it took place.

The story was a bombshell. Although ostracized at home, Politkovskaya was widely respected in the West. Later she told me that Alexander Vershbow, the American ambassador to Moscow, invited her to talk about the article. He “ventured an opinion” that allegations of that sort are so unbelievable that they must be backed by irrefutable evidence to be taken seriously.
Discounted
, I thought, remembering Tom Graham. After the Politkovskaya coup, Terkibayev vanished, despite the best efforts of Moscow journalists to find him. Eight months later he was reported killed in a car crash in Chechnya.

In early March 2003 Trepashkin delivered on his promise. How he got it, no one knew, but one day he brought to Yushenkov and Kovalyov the name, ID number, address, and telephone numbers of Gochiyayev’s business partner. Remarkably, he had never been mentioned by the FSB as a suspect in the case. Was he the man who tricked Gochiyayev into renting the spaces where the bombs were planted? Gochiyayev had claimed that his partner called him at 5

a.m. on the morning of the first explosion, shortly before the blast went off. Now this could be easily checked.

Another thing that Trepashkin dug out was Gochiyayev’s mobile phone number from which he presumably tipped off the authorities about the two other sites where explosives had been found. This too could now be easily verified. Yushenkov promptly passed the information to the official investigators of the bombing. There was no response—except that Trepashkin was called in to the prosecutor’s office and told that he would be indicted for three violations stemming from the search of his home fifteen months earlier. As reporters waited outside to see whether Trepashkin would leave the building,
Yushenkov made a strong statement linking the pressure on Trepashkin to his work for the Public Commission. Trepashkin was released—for the time being.

Then, on March 11, Felshtinsky and Sasha reported that they had reestablished contact with Gochiyayev. He seemed to have left Georgia; most likely he was in Turkey. His middleman suggested a meeting “in a third country” and promised to get back in touch to discuss logistics.

It was clear to all parties that the situation would come to a head when the two suspects held in Lefortovo went on trial. Trepashkin, representing Tanya and Aliona, would be able to raise questions in court, while Yushenkov would do what he could to drum up whatever controversies emerged from the courtroom. So Sasha and Felshtinsky raced the FSB to get to Gochiyayev first, to obtain his full statement before he was killed or caught. To me it looked like we were gaining ground. But then disaster struck.

April 17, 2003: An unknown gunman kills Sergei Yushenkov in front of his home in Moscow. Shocked members of the Duma agree that the killing is political. Most observers link the murder to Yushenkov’s role as the deputy chair of the Public Commission. In Denver, Aliona Morozova says in a statement, “I am afraid that to return to Russia would present a threat to my life, and I am asking the U.S. authorities to grant me political asylum.” In a message read at the slain deputy’s funeral, President Vladimir Putin praises “a brilliant politician who defended democracy and freedom in Russia.”

For a long time I was of two minds as to who killed Yushenkov, and why. His murder fit the mounting pattern of conspiracy theories, from the apartment bombings to the Terkibayev revelations. But then again, none of them had been proven, and, as a scientist, I had to consider that they could have been coincidences, however improbable. Intuitively it was logical that the FSB killed Yushenkov, who was the most vocal promoter of anti-FSB allegations. Then, a competing
theory about Yushenkov emerged. Two months after the murder, the police caught his assassins. The two perpetrators turned out to be career criminals and drug addicts, who were paid for the hit by a certain Alexander Vinnik, a Liberal Russia functionary from the provincial center of Syktyvkar. Vinnik confessed and said that he had acted on behalf of Mikhail Kodanev, Yushenkov’s rival in the Liberal Russia leadership. When the four of them went on trial, Kodanev was the only one who pleaded not guilty. Vinnik was lying, he said.

Yet Kodanev had a motive. In July 2002, a couple of months after Liberal Russia had been formed, Yushenkov had a conversation with a highly placed official at the Justice Ministry. He told him in no uncertain terms that the party would never be registered for the 2003 elections if Berezovsky remained on its candidate list. That was the president’s explicit order. Yushenkov had no choice; he agreed to dump Boris. The party split in half, with a Yushenkov wing and a Berezovsky wing. But then Yushenkov came to London, sat down with Boris, and they reconciled: after the party was registered, Boris’s wing would return to Yushenkov’s fold. Kodanev had been Number Two in Boris’s wing, but would have faced a much lesser standing in the reunited party. According to the prosecution, he put out the contract on Yushenkov when he learned about his reconciliation with Boris.

On the testimony of Vinnik, Kodanev was convicted and given a sentence of twenty years. I had met Kodanev a couple of times in London, and I did not like him. But Sasha was adamant that it was all a setup. The two killers were probably recruited by the FSB while in jail, he said. They were promised a few months of freedom and a reduction in their remaining sentences in exchange for the hit and for naming Vinnik as their patron. Vinnik, in turn, was told to name Kodanev or face a life sentence. Sasha had no doubt; he had seen dozens of such cases. With his pledge to make the bombings an election issue Yushenkov was a threat; Kontora would stop at nothing to get rid of him. How could I not see it? Yushenkov was not the first and would not be the last, he predicted. “And there will always be a plausible ‘legend.’ That’s part of the tradecraft.”

Indeed, seven months before Yushenkov was killed, his associate, Vladimir Golovlyov, a Duma member who was in charge of Liberal
Russia finances, was shot while walking his dog. His killers were never found. The predominant theory was that it was a business dispute; Golovlyov had been involved in many privatization deals.