CHECHNYA LINKS LIBRARY

Two suspects detained in Ingushetia over Nevsky Express train bombing

By Beybulat Polonkoyev

NAZRAN, Ingushetia – On the evening of October 23 two local residents were detained by Russian police and FSB officials in the village of Ekazhevo, which is located in Ingushetia’s Nazranovsky district. The suspects, two brothers named Khidriyev, are suspected of the bombing of a passenger train in Novgorod oblast on August 13, one of their immediate family members told Prague Watchdog’s correspondent.

This information was later confirmed by the republic’s interior ministry. Both detainees have now been taken to Moscow for questioning and further investigation.

Commenting on the arrests, Ruslan Badalov, director of the Chechen Committee for National Salvation (CCNS) said: "In the past when anything happened in Russia, a ‘Chechen trace’ was seen everywhere, and now they’ve started to attribute it to Ingushetia. When the Volgodonsk apartment blasts took place Chechens were immediately accused of having caused them, without the slightest intervention of legal procedures or the courts, though they never caught a single Chechen who might have been responsible for that terrible crime. I’m afraid that just as in the case of Chechnya, the increasingly frequent comments about an ‘Ingush trace’ are going to serve as a springboard for the launching of military operations in Ingushetia."

On August 13 2007 several carriages of passenger train No.166 from Moscow to St Petersburg were derailed on the stretch of track between the villages of Burga and Krasnenka in the Malovishersky district of Novgorod oblast. According to the official investigation, the accident was caused by the detonation of a home-made explosive device. Some 60 passengers were hurt, no one was killed.

Three men are already being treated as suspects in the case. Two, presently on bail, are residents of St Petersburg, and the third is a Chechen resident of Chudovo, a district town in Novgorod oblast.

(Translation by DM)

(D/T)