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The main point of the allegations against the FSB was that Achemez Gochiyaev, the main suspect according to FSB’s version, was an innocent businessman made a scapegoat by the FSB and falsely accused in carrying out a terrorist attack. In fact, Gochiyaev was well known in his native Karachaevo-Cherkassia, a tiny republic in the North Caucasus, since the mid-1990s as a leader of local Islamist group. Since the early 1990s Karachaevo-Cherkassia has witnessed the growth of local Islamist movements: The Jamaat of the Republic established close ties with Chechen rebels, and the Karachaev Battalion was sent to Chechnya in the late 1990s. Gochiyaev, Adam Dekkushev, and Yusuf Krymshamkhalov were members of the so-called Muslim Society No. 3, founded in 1995. According to the Russian secret services, by 2001 Muslim Society No. 3 counted more than 500 members and began a campaign of terror in nearby regions. In the spring of 2001 a series of terrorist attacks took place in the towns Mineralnie Vodi, Essentuki, and Cherkessk. One of the bombers was soon arrested and turned out to be a member of the society Arasul Hubiev. Then more than twenty members of the society were captured, and some tried to flee to Georgia. But the detentions did not disrupt the society’s activities. It managed to carry out two spectacular terrorist attacks in Moscow: the suicide bombing in the Paveletskaya metro station on February 6, 2004, and the female suicide attack near the Rizhskaya metro station on August 31, 2004.
By then Adam Dekkushev and Yusuf Krymshamkhalov had been captured in Georgia’s Pankisi valley by Georgian secret services and handed over to Russia. On the first day of the trial in November 2003, Yusuf Krymshamkhalov partially admitted his guilt, acknowledging that he had accompanied a shipment of the explosives. He also admitted he had received training at a rebel camp. For his part, Adam Dekkushev confirmed that together with Krymshamkhalov he had accompanied a shipment of hexogen, packed in sugar bags, without having any idea as to what was inside. In January 2004 both were sentenced to life imprisonment. For further details, see agentura.ru and
http://studies.agentura.ru
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