Alexander Litvinenko
Page 30
Journalist: With what aim did you arrive in the region of Dagestan and afterwards in Chechnya?
Galkin: We arrived in Dagestan and Chechnya to carry out terrorist acts on the territory of Dagestan and on the territory of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.
Journalist: And against whom were these, were they directed? Were you supposed to carry out explosions against peaceful civilians or somebody else?
Galkin: These bombings were directed against peaceful civilians.
Journalist: And who& Who was it that sent you on this mission?
183
184
Galkin: We were appointed and sent on our mission by order of the Central Intelligence Office [GRU] of the armed forces of the Russian Federation.
Journalist: Can you name the actual man who sent you?
Galkin: It was colonel general Korabelnikov, head of the Central Intelligence Office and head of the 14th section of the Central Intelligence Office lieutenant general Kostechko.
Journalist: Do you personally and does your unit have anything to do with the explosions in Moscow?
Galkin: Personally our unit has nothing to do with the explosions in Moscow, since at that time we were in Dagestan. The members of our unit, the members of our unit of 12 men, who were in Dagestan at that time, carried out the bombing of the house in Buinaksk.
184
185
Appendix 10 Abu Movsaev s talk with a group of foreign journalists about the testimony of Senior Lieutenant A. Galkin Abu Movsaev: At the present time when we have with us a member of the GRU, their leader colonel Ivanov, the very one who supervised the blowing up of the house. The GRU& In the present situation you can photograph the senior lieutenant (shows identity pass) senior lieutenant Alexei Galkin, who was redeployed to the territory of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria from Dagestan. Is that it, have you photographed him? (They take photographs) More? In Volgodonsk too the explosions were carried out by members of the special services. And so today when they call us terrorists it proves the opposite. (Shows something) These are their cipher messages, that is, the cipher messages are here.
It s a book for explosions, for working with explosives, working with explosives activity: which ones and how much should be used. We have this all completely - the conclusive evidence and all their& It all (he demonstrates something) all this proves it (they take photographs)& That s all. Now, next, the next point&
Question: (Questions are usually asked in English and then translated into Russian by the interpreter, not always accurately and correctly). On whom exactly, on whom did you find this book?
Abu Movsaev s answer: Their group that was arrested here, the GRU. That is, that was, so that today you ll understand - that s the Central Intelligence Office of the Russian Federation, the 14th Department.
Question: On exactly what date did you find this book?
Answer: We arrested them, this group, on October 3-4 1999.
Question: When did they find this man?
Interpreter s answer: On the same day, the fourth, October 4.
Answer: The Fourteenth Department of the GRU. The Central Intelligence Office of the Russian Federation primarily handles killings of political leaders and sabotage activity.
Here s the statement made by senior lieutenant Galkin. (Shows it) Question: Does he have a voluntary statement?
Answer: Yes. There s his signature.
Question: Why didn t he make a statement immediately on October 4?
Answer: Ah, no& well at first we worked on him, worked on him for a long time, then he turned, we sent the cassette to Istanbul to the November 18 summit, where it specifically& they pointed out why they& After that, listen to this, after that the Russian leadership, the Central Intelligence Office, made a statement, supposedly they thought that we d shot them. Since we d spread the rumor.
Question: His motivation for confessing? What motivated him?
Answer: What motivated him was when he saw the Chechen people was being totally wiped out, indiscriminately. We showed him videos of children being murdered, women and old men being murdered, and then since after all I m a special services instructor and I know their Department, what they do, and when we gave him legal proof, and so after what followed, he confessed.
Question: And he accepted responsibility for one explosion, is that right?
185
186
Answer: No& The explosion - at that time he was Buinaksk. The explosions made in Buinaksk were supervised by colonel Ivanov, who is his superior and was deployed to Chechnya with him. He named Ivanov and other employees, yes, no& but he didn t take part in this business.
Question: On the basis of this confession alone you draw the conclusion that the other explosions in Moscow were also the work of the Russian government? You only think&
Answer: Eh, no& We don t think, we have proof. The first proof, the first proof is that any group that they deploy in the rear of the enemy, they already know, their leader announces that we re going into the territory of the Chechen Republic since we made the explosions in Moscow, Volgodonsk and Buinaksk. That is, not specifically their group, in all of them, that is in the eyes of the peaceful community we made terrorists out of them, killers in the abduction of people, today we have to prove that these people are& they have to wiped out, that is the Chechen people. At the political briefings. Until now& the second point where we have proof is what I repeated before this and I repeat now: hexogene was used. There is no hexogene on the territory of Chechnya. Hexogene marked top secret in red is only held by the special services of the Russian Federation and without the leaders of the Central Intelligence Office and the FSB no one has the right to take a single gram of this hexogene. And afterwards Central Intelligence Office employees arrested by us explained that on the last raid their colonel Ivanov explained to them at the political briefing that these explosions were carried by our employees together with the FSB. Yes, yes, and another thing, they all talked about it&
Question: Do you accuse, place the guilt for these explosions on the Government of Russia, the Central Intelligence Office, the FSB or one individual in particular?
Answer: In the first place, I ll tell you specifically. Vladimir Putin as chairman developed them. Specifically by the leaders of these special services of the Russian Federation, former agents of external intelligence who were appointed by Putin and these are Putin s most trusted people at the present time. Here there is a second point: the fact that today with the political, in the political arena Putin today at any price, by any killings wants to become president of the Russian Federation. (The light goes out, they stop recording. Abu Movsaev lights a cigarette.) When I m smoking, please, don t film me. (They switch on the light, recording is resumed.) Answer: Another thing, I don t want to prove to you here today that we are angels, I don t want to prove that we are good people. We want to prove one thing: that Russia is a terrorist state. Nothing else. All that we today& that we re trying to do, for the sake of Allah we re doing it, if the West interferes, it won t interfere for us, if honestly speaking we are sure that today the West, the leadership of the West, will not at least intervene in the killing of the Chechen people, all the rest, you know, all the wars end through negotiations. I believe that we won the last war, I think& in this war, we ll win this war.
So you can have concrete information, today we were informed that Argun has been taken by the Russians. Right now bitter fighting is taking place in Argun and the Russian forces are pulling back. Right, any more questions for me? Afterwards& And I have just one request: translate for them& Too many questions& I won t let them ask the Central Intelligence Office man too many questions. You can& You can ask him& ask for what purpose he was redeployed in the territory of Chechnya, concerning Dagestan, where they worked before that, and all the rest& well and now the statement (shows it) - did we force him or not. Please don t think today that we did to this man, if our men fall
186
187
into their ha
nds they kill them straight away. Well, although today we can t dress him and feed him the way we should - the Russians themselves are to blame, because we re completely blockaded. Another thing: any international law provides for members of special services who have crossed the border to cause explosions, kill their political leaders, by judicial& they hold a judicial inquiry and have them shot. We could have shot them before this. (Shows the GRU man s book, shows the code notebook of the other prisoner.) Question: Is the signature actually this officer s or someone else s?
Answer: It belongs to the second member of the GRU, it s& Ah, it s his own, his&
These are the second member s code messages, code messages and code signal messages, that they gave them, these code messages are prepared in advance, this is all that they were given, these are their routes where& yes, these are their code messages, the signalman and the demolition man& These are theirs yes& these& they re code names, satellite links& There& There look& There s a verbal exchange table on satellite communications radio location for managing radio traffic. It s&
Question: It s stupid for an intelligence officer to carry papers like that on his person.
Answer: They didn t think& They were being transported by Chechens in a secret vehicle, since sometimes we don t check Chechen vehicles, with a beard, especially. The way of thinking& They were relying on it. There s data - it s what, look, the enemy s designated - the page (shows and talks about designations from the code notebook). If they saw an enemy, that is, us. They& Code names&
Translator: A beetle is an armed personnel carrier, a spider is an automobile, a string is a plane.
Question: Well, in general, what is it? That is, what else?
Answer: It s when they come across, for example, one of our population centers, when they have to make strikes, they transmitted code names if we re in there, so we wouldn t understand. There, for example, Berlin, they call a town Berlin, on Chechen territory there s Bratskoe, Nadterechny district. Bar, the word Bar, that s the Nadterechny district too. These are the population centers where they had to work initially and make strikes.
Question: Did all the explosions that were planned take place or were several explosions prevented? Were other explosions supposed to take place?
Answer: Naturally. They, according to my operational information, in Penza they wouldn t have been, in Ryazan that is they wouldn t have been caught by employees of the MVD accidentally, then there were supposed to be explosions in Volgograd, in the Stavropol territory, in the Saratov Region, well, that is, basically, where mostly Chechens live (Repeats this.) Saratov& Well, basically, where compact&
Question: What is your position?
Answer: Head of the President s Special Department. At that time I gave proofs of the murder& the Red Cross killing. At that time I was in charge of a special missions detachment, that the Red Cross killing was committed by Deniev s people, who are in Moscow at the present time. Look, and everywhere there&
Interpreter: Adam Deniev&
Answer: And who is an employee, an agent of the special services. He has a GRU identity pass, he has all the identity passes& When we signed the agreement between the FSB of the Russian Federation and the National Security Service, we applied officially to Kovalyov, the head, the then head of the FSB, with proofs, for them to hand
187
188
over Deniev to us, to which Kovalyov answered me that he couldn t hand over Deniev to me since they were very interested in him continuing his work. And our Public Prosecutor of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria repeatedly made official demands to the Public Prosecutor s Office of the Russian Federation to hand over Deniev specifically for the Red Cross killing, but we couldn t get hold of him.
Question: Why did Deniev kill the Red Cross people?
Answer: The material when I resigned I left with to our branch, the special service and to the prosecutor s office, our prosecutor s office.
Question: Do you know who killed Fred Koening?
Answer: I know very well. Since he was at my house in the period before the war and at that time and just before he left for the last time, he stayed the night at my house. With several proofs of what was going on in the Russian Republic s filtration camps. After he disappeared without trace, Djokhar Dudaev, the president, was the first president of the Chechen Republic, set up a brigade to search for and locate Koening. As the head of the special service I was a member of the brigade, that is we established that he was last seen on the crossroads at Chechen-U, where the Russian forces were located at that time. With certainty& If today in the Russian Federation& Then the rumor spread that in the Great Martanov district (inaudible) we still haven t found, I m sure, that if the Russian forces enter the Martanov district, if they seize it, they ll definitely find the burial site, that is they re the only ones who know where the burial site is. In 1996 we were contacted by an officer of the Russian Federation saying he could show us the burial site, but he wanted 100,000 dollars. Since we didn t have that kind of money (inaudible). They said to me that he would actually sell the medallion that was on his body.
Question: What do you know about the murder of the employees of the British television company?
Answer: I know. (Inaudible). One of those people was actually abducted. The last time American and German journalists came I (inaudible) we gave them specifically, but to remember everything in my head sort of. From this document a criminal case could be (inaudible). That, you understand, today I can (inaudible) there were loads of abducted people were on the territory of Dagestan, Ingushetia and Northern Ossetia. And they also kept them there. Here the organized criminal groups of all the republics and of our state even had between them some kind of (inaudible). Our criminal groups informed the relatives of this or that person and supposedly accepted responsibility. Specifically I can, for instance Arbi Baraev who everyone thought was villain, that he d carried out all the thefts of people. If you can remember, in Makhachkala 4 Frenchmen were abducted.
Remember? Well that was the Dagestanis who contacted Baraev and asked him to say that these Frenchmen were in Chechnya. For that phone call Baraev received $200,000.
Since Baraev at that time (inaudible). On the border of Chechnya and Dagestan, in Gerzel, Baraev received $3,000,000. He kept 200,000 dollars, gave 2,800,000 dollars to the Dagestanis and the Frenchmen were brought and handed over on the territory of Dagestan. There are very many cases like that. Really? That s the first time I ve heard that. I heard that on the border of Georgia and Chechnya he disappeared supposedly.
There weren t any cases on the territory of Chechnya, it didn t happen that& There was one attempt in August, in September there was one attempt, we immediately arrested those people and in accordance with sharia legal procedure we handed them over for sharia trial.
188
189
Appendix 11 Transcript of Radio Liberty Discussion of Blowing Up Russia Radio Liberty, Facts and Opinions Host Lev Roytman June 11, 2002 Lev Roytman: Blowing Up Russia: Terror From Within is a book that came out in America, in January of this year, in English. Radio Liberty has devoted several programs, under the same title, to a detailed exposition of this book. In August of last year, excerpts from the book were published in the Moscow newspaper Novaya Gazeta. The Russian original of this book was published in February by the Liberty Publishing House in New York under the title, The FSB Blows Up Russia, with the subtitle, The Federal Security Service - an Organizer of Terrorist Attacks, Kidnappings, and Murders.
The authors of the book are Alexander Litvinenko, a former lieutenant colonel of the FSB, and Yuri Felshtinsky, a well-known historian who will be speaking to us by phone from Boston. In our Moscow studios are human rights advocates Sergei Kovalyov, Oleg Orlov, and Alexander Cherkasov.
Yuri Georgievich Felshtinsky! On March 5, after your book had already come out, a French documentary film called Assassination of Russia was shown at a press conference given by Boris Berezovsky in London. The documentary dealt with the FSB s li
kely involvement in the apartment-house bombings in September 1999. These explosions were the prologue and the pretext for the second war in Chechnya. You describe the FSB on a larger scale as a criminal organization in general.
First of all, is there any connection between your book and the French documentary? And second, your sources - are they verifiable?
Yuri Felshtinsky: The book and the documentary are certainly connected. I was the initiator behind the documentary, and the idea of making a documentary based on the book was mine. Then there s the separate issue of how the whole thing was organized, how a team of French directors was found, and so on. But the connection between the book and the documentary is direct and straightforward. That is the answer to your first question.