Russian Apartment Bombings Part I

 

The Russian apartment bombings were a series of explosions that hit four apartment blocks in the Russian cities of Buynaksk, Moscow and Volgodonsk in September 1999, killing more than 300, injuring more than 1,000, and spreading a wave of fear across the country. The bombings, together with the Invasion of Dagestan, triggered the Second Chechen War. The handling of the crisis by Vladimir Putin, who was prime minister at the time, boosted his popularity greatly and helped him attain the presidency within a few months.

The blasts hit Buynaksk on 4 September and in Moscow on 9 and 13 September. On 13 September, Russian Duma speaker Gennadiy Seleznyov made an announcement in the Duma about receiving a report that another bombing had just happened in the city of Volgodonsk. A bombing did indeed happen in Volgodonsk, but only three days later, on 16 September. Chechen militants were blamed for the bombings, but denied responsibility, along with Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov.

A suspicious device resembling those used in the bombings was found and defused in an apartment block in the Russian city of Ryazan on 22 September. On 23 September, Vladimir Putin praised the vigilance of the inhabitants of Ryazan and ordered the air bombing of Grozny, which marked the beginning of the Second Chechen War. Three FSB agents who had planted the devices at Ryazan were arrested by the local police, with the devices containing a sugar-like substance resembling RDX. The next day, FSB director Nikolay Patrushev announced that the incident in Ryazan had been an anti-terror drill and the device found there contained only sugar.

The official Russian investigation of the Buynaksk bombing was completed in 2000, while the investigation of Moscow and Volgodonsk bombings was completed in 2002. In 2000, seven people were convicted of perpetrating the Buynaksk attack. According to the court ruling on the Moscow and Volgodonsk bombings, which was announced in 2004, the attacks were organized and led by Achemez Gochiyaev, who remains at large. All bombings, the court ruled, were ordered by Islamist warlords Ibn Al-Khattab and Abu Omar al-Saif, who have been killed. Five other suspects have been killed and six have been convicted by Russian courts on terrorism-related charges.

State Duma deputy Yuri Shchekochikhin filed two motions for a parliamentary investigation of the events, but the motions were rejected by the State Duma in March 2000. An independent public commission to investigate the bombings was chaired by Duma deputy Sergei Kovalev. The commission was rendered ineffective because of government refusal to respond to its inquiries. Two key members of the Kovalev Commission, Sergei Yushenkov and Yuri Shchekochikhin, have since died in apparent assassinations. The Commission's lawyer and investigator Mikhail Trepashkin was arrested and served four years in prison for revealing state secrets. Former FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko, who defected and blamed the FSB for the bombings, was poisoned and killed in London in 2006. A British inquiry later determined that Litvinenko's murder was "probably" carried out with the approval of Putin and Patrushev.

The attacks were officially attributed to Chechen terrorists. Some historians and journalists claim the bombings were coordinated by Russian state security services to help bring Putin into the presidency. Others disagree with such theories. Independent investigations have faced obstruction from the Russian government.

Terrorism in Russia

Bombings

Overview

Five apartment bombings took place and at least three attempted bombings were prevented. All bombings had the same "signature", judging from the nature and the volume of the destruction. In each case a powerful explosive was used, and the timers were set to go off at night and inflict the maximum number of civilian casualties. The explosives were placed to destroy the weakest, most critical elements of the buildings and force them to "collapse like a house of cards". The individuals behind the bombings were able to obtain or manufacture several tons of powerful explosives and deliver them to numerous destinations across Russia.

Moscow mall

On 31 August 1999, at 20:00 local time, an explosion took place in "Okhotny Ryad" shopping mall on Manezhnaya Square, Moscow. One person was killed, and some 30 to 40 others injured. According to the FSB, the explosion had been caused by a bomb of about 300 grams of explosives. On 2 September 1999, an unknown person called and claimed that the bombing was committed by the militant organization the "Liberation Army of Dagestan".

Buynaksk, Dagestan

On 4 September 1999, at 22:00, a car bomb detonated outside a five-story apartment building in the city of Buynaksk in Dagestan, near the border of Chechnya. The building was housing Russian border guard soldiers and their families. Sixty-four people were killed and 133 were injured in the explosion. Another car bomb was found and defused in the same town. The defused bomb was in a car containing 2,706 kilograms (5,966 lb) of explosives. It was discovered by local residents in a parking lot surrounded by an army hospital and residential buildings.

Moscow, Pechatniki

On 9 September 1999, shortly after midnight local time, at 20:00 GMT, a bomb detonated on the ground floor of an apartment building in southeast Moscow (19 Guryanova Street). The explosive power was equivalent to 300–400 kilograms (660–880 lb) of TNT. The nine-story building was destroyed, killing 106 people inside (with early reports giving 93 dead) and injuring 249 others, and damaging 19 nearby buildings. A total of 108 apartments were destroyed during the bombing. An FSB spokesman announced that traces of RDX and TNT were found on items removed from the site of the explosion. Residents said a few minutes before the blast four men were seen speeding away from the building in a car.

Russian President Boris Yeltsin ordered the search of 30,000 residential buildings in Moscow for explosives. He took personal control of the investigation of the blast. Putin declared 13 September a day of mourning for the victims of the attacks.

Moscow, Kashirskoye highway

On 13 September 1999, at 05:00, a large bomb exploded in a basement of an apartment block on Kashirskoye Highway in southern Moscow, about 6 kilometers (3.7 mi) from the place of the last attack. This was the deadliest blast in the chain of bombings (because the apartment was built with brick), with 119 people killed and 200 injured. The eight-story building was flattened, littering the street with debris and throwing some concrete pieces hundreds of meters away.

Moscow, prevented bombings

On September 13, 1999, the police found and defused bombs in an apartment block on Borisovskiye Prudy street and Kapotnya in Moscow.

According to Litvinenko, Felshtinsky and Goldfarb, on 13 September 1999, Achemez Gochiyaev called and reported about bombs planted in several locations. Gochiyaev claimed that he was framed by his old acquaintance, an FSB officer who asked him to rent basements "as storage facilities" at four locations where bombs were later found. After the second explosion on Kashirskoe highway Gochiyaev recognized he was set up, called the police and told them about the basements of two other buildings at Borisovskie Prudy and Kapotnya, where the explosives were actually found and explosions averted. In 2002 Felshtinsky and Litvinenko obtained a written testimony from Achemez Gochiyaev as well as a video recording and several photographs about it. The same statement was received by Prima News agency.

According to Russian newspaper Kommersant and the public relations centre of the FSB, further bombings in Moscow were prevented with the help of a real estate agent who called the police after the second bombing in Moscow and told about his client, who rented basements in the two buildings which were blown up in Moscow. The client was identified as Achemez Gochiyaev.

Volgodonsk

A truck bomb exploded on 16 September 1999, outside a nine-story apartment complex in the southern Russian city of Volgodonsk, killing 17 people and injuring 69. The bombing took place at 5:57 am. Surrounding buildings were also damaged. The blast also happened 14 km (9 mi) from a nuclear power plant. Prime Minister Putin signed a decree calling on law enforcement and other agencies to develop plans within three days to protect industry, transportation, communications, food processing centres and nuclear complexes.

Ryazan incident

At 20:30 on 22 September 1999, Alexei Kartofelnikov, a resident of an apartment building in the city of Ryazan noticed two suspicious men who carried sacks into the basement from a car. While the license plate indicated that the car was registered in Moscow, a sheet of paper was taped over the last two digits, and the number written on it implied that the car was local.

Kartofelnikov alerted the police, but by the time they arrived the car and the men were gone. The policemen found three sacks of white powder in the basement, each weighing 50 kg (110 lb). A detonator and a timing device were attached to the sacks. The detonator was reported by a Russian newspaper to be a 12-gauge shotgun shell filled with powder. The timer was set to 5:30 AM. Yuri Tkachenko, the head of the local bomb squad, disconnected the detonator and the timer. Reportedly, Tkachenko tested the three sacks of white substance with a "MO-2" gas analyzer, which detected RDX vapors.

Inhabitants of the apartment building were evacuated. According to David Satter, residents of neighboring buildings fled their homes in terror, to the effect that nearly 30,000 residents spent the night on the street. Police and rescue vehicles converged from different parts of the city. As many as 1,200 local police officers were put on alert, the railroad stations and the airport were surrounded, and roadblocks were set up on highways leaving the city.

At 01:30 on 23 September 1999, explosive engineers of the Ryazan UFSB took a sample of substance from the suspicious-looking sacks to a firing ground located about 1.6 km (1 mi) away from Ryazan for testing. During the substance tests at that area they tried to explode it by means of a detonator, which was also made from a shotgun shell, but the substance failed to detonate. At 05:00, Radio Rossiya reported about the attempted bombing, noting that the bomb was set up to go off at 05:30. In the morning, Ryazan resembled a city under siege. Composite sketches of three suspected terrorists, two men and a woman, were posted everywhere in the city and shown on TV. At 08:00 Russian television reported the attempt to blow out the building in Ryazan and identified the explosive used in the bomb as RDX. Vladimir Rushailo announced later that police prevented a terrorist act. A news report at 16:00 reported that the explosives failed to detonate during their testing outside the city.

At 19:00, Vladimir Putin praised the vigilance of the inhabitants of Ryazan, and called for the air bombing of the Chechen capital Grozny in response to the terrorism acts. He said:

If the sacks which proved to contain explosive were noticed, that means there is a positive side to it, if only the fact that the public is reacting correctly to the events taking place in our country today. I'd like ... to thank the public. ... No panic, no sympathy for the bandits.

On 23 September Natalia Yukhnova, a telephone service employee in Ryazan, tapped into a suspicious phone call to Moscow and overheard the following instruction: "Leave one at a time, there are patrols everywhere". The called number was traced to a telephone exchange unit serving FSB offices.

When arrested, the detainees produced FSB identification cards. They were soon released on orders from Moscow.

The position of Russian authorities on the Ryazan incident changed significantly over time. Initially, it was declared by the FSB and federal government to be a real threat. However, after the people who planted the bomb were identified, the official version changed to "security training".

On 24 September, FSB director Nikolai Patrushev announced that it was an exercise that was being carried out to test responses after the earlier blasts.

The Ryazan FSB "reacted with fury" and issued a statement saying:

This announcement came as a surprise to us and appeared at the moment when the ... FSB had identified the places of residence in Ryazan of those involved in planting the explosive device and was prepared to detain them.

FSB also issued a public apology about the incident. In a show Independent Investigation on NTV, Evgeniy Savostyanov, former director of Moscow and Moscow Oblast regional FSB branch, has criticized the FSB for performing such exercise on residential buildings with inhabitants inside and without notifying local authorities.

In excerpts from the planned Ryazan operation, first published in 2002, it was stated that the exercise was overseen by the head of the FSB's Center of Special Operations (CSO), Major General Alexander Tikhonov.

In February 2000, Novaya Gazeta journalist Pavel Voloshin has published an essay What happened in Ryazan: Sugar or Hexogen?, that was partly based on his two-hour long interview with Yuri Tkachenko, the police explosives expert who defused the Ryazan bomb. The essay noted that it's well known that a gas analyzer that tested the vapors coming from the sacks indicated the presence of RDX. Tkachenko said that he was completely certain that the instrument was in correct working order. The gas analyzer was of world-class quality, cost $20,000, and was maintained by a specialist who worked according to a strict schedule, making frequent prophylactic checks, because the device contained a radioactive source. Meticulous care in the handling of the gas analyzer was a necessity because the lives of the bomb squad experts depended on the reliability of their equipment. Speaking of the detonator, Voloshin noted that people who disarmed the device (Tkachenko and his bomb squad) claimed that the detonator attached to the sacks was not a dummy and had been prepared on a professional level. The police warrant officer who answered the original call and discovered the bomb insisted that there were no doubts it was a combat situation.

At a press conference on the occasion of the Security Agency Worker's Day in December 2001, Tkachenko said that a gas analyzer has not been used and the detonator was a shotgun shell that couldn't detonate any known explosives.

In March 2000, newspaper Ryazanskiye Vedomosti published an interview with Lieutenant Colonel Yuri Maximov, the head of the investigative section of the Ryazan UFSB. Maximov said that the Ryazan bomb squad was equipped with explosive vapor detector "М-02", but bomb-disposal experts didn't like it and used analytical kit "Exprei", which was more accurate.

In February 2003, Kommersant journalist Olga Allenova has studied the criminal investigation file on the Ryazan incident, obtained by Russian State Duma member Sergei Kovalev. According to the proceedings, a bomb disposal expert who arrived to the scene has twice performed a test which didn't show the presence of explosive particles. The head of the bomb squad Tkachenko, who arrived soon after that, made a test himself and found the RDX. The investigator who questioned Yuri Tkachenko concluded that the detection of RDX was made possible by contamination of Yuri Tkachenko's hands, since the latter worked with explosives containing RDX on the day before the incident without wearing sterile gloves. Another detail concerned the type of a device used to detect the explosives. The report submitted by the Ryazan UFSB claimed that gas analyzer "M-02" was used. However, during Tkachenko's questioning it was revealed that he had used the device "Exprel" for the analysis. The investigation has resolved the contradiction in the following way. The bomb squad in Ryazan is equipped with the gas analyzer "М-02", but the latter has certain limitations. The device has a high degree of imprecision, and the analysis takes a long time. So, the bomb squad used the device "Exprel", which is more robust, accurate and easy to use. But since they were not supposed to possess that device, the bomb squad has submitted the paperwork which showed that the gas analyzer "M-02" had been used.

In March 2000, head of the Ryazan UFSB General Sergeyev appeared on TV show "Independent Investigation" commenting on the device used to detect the RDX. According to Sergeyev, it was packed in a briefcase and acted like a litmus test from school. The substance to be investigated was wiped by a collection paper, which was subsequently sprayed from an aerosol can. A change of the paper color indicated the presence of explosives. Sergeyev explained the false positive result by prior contamination of the lid of the briefcase, on which Tkachenko poured some sugar from the sacks to perform the test.

The case of private Alexei Pinyaev

In March 2000, Novaya Gazeta journalist Pavel Voloshin reported the account of Private Alexei P. (later identified as Pinyaev) of the 137th Regiment. Pinyaev guarded a storehouse with weapons and ammunition near the city of Ryazan. Together with a friend, he entered the storehouse to see the weapons. The friends were surprised to see that the storehouse contained sacks with the word "sugar" on them. Pinyaev and his friend were discouraged, but didn't want to leave the storehouse empty-handed. The two paratroopers cut a hole in one of the bags and put some sugar in a plastic bag. They made tea with the sugar, but the taste of the tea was terrible. They became frightened because the substance might turn out to be saltpeter, and brought the plastic bag to a platoon commander. He consulted a sapper, who identified the substance as hexogen.

According to Felshtinsky and Pribylovsky, after the newspaper report FSB officers descended on Pinyayev’s unit, accused them of divulging a state secret and told them, "You guys can't even imagine what serious business you’ve got yourselves tangled up in." The regiment later sued publishers of Novaya Gazeta for insulting the honour of the Russian Army, since there was no Private Alexei Pinyayev in the regiment, according to their statement.

A report aired by ORT in March 2000 and created by journalist Leonid Grozin and operator Dmitry Vishnevoy has accused Novaya Gazeta of lying. According to Grozin and Vishnevoy, there is no storehouse at the test range of the 137th Regiment. Alexei Pinyaev has admitted meeting with Pavel Voloshin, but claimed that he was merely asked to confirm a pre-conceived story.

At an FSB press conference in 2001, Private Pinyayev stated that there was no hexogen in the 137th Airborne Regiment and that he was hospitalized in December 1999 and no longer visited the test range.

Explosives in the apartment bombings

After the bombing at Guryanova Street on September 9, the Moscow FSB reported that items removed from the scene showed traces of TNT and RDX (or "hexogen").

Later FSB declared that the explosive used in the bombings was a mixture of aluminium powder, ammonium nitrate, TNT and sugar prepared by the perpetrators in a concrete mixer at a fertilizer factory in Urus-Martan, Chechnya. Also, each bomb contained some plastic explosive used as an explosive booster.

RDX is produced in only one factory in Russia, in the city of Perm. According to David Satter, the FSB changed the story about the type of explosive, since it was difficult to explain how huge amounts of RDX disappeared from the closely guarded Perm facility. According to Lieutenant General of the FSB Ivan Mironov, the precise composition of the explosive mixture was hard to determine, because no visible traces remain after the aluminium powder is consumed in a blast.

Related events

War of Dagestan

On 7 August 1999, an Islamist group, led by Shamil Basayev and Ibn al-Khattab, invaded the Russian republic of Dagestan.

According to historian René De La Pedraja, the war in Chechnya was planned in advance by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, soon after kidnapping of Gennady Shpigun. The ministry developed a plan for a limited military campaign to occupy the northern third of Chechnya up to the Terek River valley. Putin strongly supported the initial plan to occupy only the northern third of Chechnya. The invasion of militants in Dagestan accelerated the schedule for such a campaign. However, after the apartment bombings, "the usually cool and cautious Putin was swept away in the popular outrage" and decided to approve a much more ambitious campaign to subdue all of Chechnya. The Russian Army was not ready to pursue the extended campaign, which resulted in a prolonged conflict.

Advanced warnings about the impending bombings

In July 1999, Russian journalist Aleksandr Zhilin, writing in the Moskovskaya Pravda, warned that there would be terrorist attacks in Moscow organized by the government. Using a leaked Kremlin document as evidence, he added that the motive would be to undermine the opponents of the Russian President Boris Yeltsin. These included Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov and former prime minister Yevgeny Primakov. However, this warning was ignored.

According to Amy Knight, "even more significant is the fact that a respected and influential Duma deputy, Konstantin Borovoi, was told on September 9, the day of the first Moscow apartment bombing, that there was to be a terrorist attack in the city. His source was an officer of the Russian military intelligence (GRU). Borovoy transmitted this information to FSB officials serving on Yeltsin's Security Council, but he was ignored."

Announcement of impending Volgodonsk bombings in the Russian Duma

On 13 September, just hours after the second explosion in Moscow, Russian Duma speaker Gennadiy Seleznyov of the Communist Party made an announcement, "I have just received a report. According to information from Rostov-on-Don, an apartment building in the city of Volgodonsk was blown up last night." When the Volgodonsk bombing happened on 16 September, Vladimir Zhirinovsky demanded the following day an explanation in the Duma, but Seleznyov turned his microphone off. Vladimir Zhirinovsky said in the Russian Duma: "Remember, Gennadiy Nikolaevich, how you told us that an apartment block has been blown up in Volgodonsk, three days prior to the blast? How should we interpret this? The State Duma knows that the apartment block was destroyed on Monday, and it has indeed been blown up on Thursday..."

Alexander Litvinenko believed that someone had mixed up the order of the blasts, "the usual Kontora mess up". According to Litvinenko, "Moscow-2 was on the 13th and Volgodonsk on 16th, but they got it to the speaker the other way around". Investigator Mikhail Trepashkin confirmed that the man who gave Seleznyov the note was indeed an FSB officer.

Later Seleznyov told a Russian newspaper that he actually referred to an explosion organized by criminal gangs, which took place in Volgodonsk and claimed no fatalities.

In an August 2017 interview with Yuri Dud, Vladimir Zhirinovsky was asked about the incident in State Duma and claimed there was a misunderstanding.

Sealing of all materials by the Russian Duma

The Russian Duma rejected two motions for a parliamentary investigation of the Ryazan incident. In the Duma a pro-Kremlin party Unity, voted to seal all materials related to the Ryazan incident for the next 75 years and forbade an investigation into what happened.

Claims and denials of responsibility for the blasts

On 9 September, an anonymous person, speaking with a Caucasian accent, phoned the Interfax news agency, saying that the blasts in Moscow and Buynaksk were "our response to the bombings of civilians in the villages in Chechnya and Dagestan."

On 13 September 1999, Novaya Gazeta published a report by retired army major Vyacheslav Izmailov, which said that the editorial board of Novaya gazeta had received information about the planned terrorist attacks from its sources in Chechnya. In a follow-up article published on 20 September 1999, Izmailov revealed that Novaya Gazeta had received the information on 8 September, twelve hours before the bombing on Guryanova street in Moscow, and immediately relayed it to the Chief Directorate Combating Organized Crime (GUBOP) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The article has also identified the source as Alexander Kapanadze, a non-commissioned officer in the Russian Army who was taken captive by Chechens in 1995. According to Izmailov, as many as 10 terrorist attacks have been planned. In a documentary by Alexey Pivovarov, editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta Dmitry Muratov commented that Kapanadze has disappeared soon after he had met with GUBOP; none of his whereabouts are known.

On 15 September, an unidentified man, again speaking with a Caucasian accent, called the ITAR-TASS news agency, claiming to represent a group called the Liberation Army of Dagestan. He said that the explosions in Buynaksk and Moscow were carried out by his organisation. According to him, the attacks were a retaliation to the deaths of Muslim women and children during Russian air raids in Dagestan. "We will answer death with death," the caller said. Russian officials from both the Interior Ministry and FSB, at the time, expressed skepticism over the claims and said there is no such organization. On 15 September 1999, a Dagestani official also denied the existence of a "Dagestan Liberation Army".

In an interview published in Lidove Noviny on September 9, Shamil Basayev denied responsibility for the bombings and said that it had been the work of Dagestanis. According to Basayev, the bombings were a retribution for the military operation of the Russian Army against "three small villages" in Dagestan. In subsequent interviews, Basayev said he didn't know who perpetrated the bombings.

In a 12 September interview with Associated Press, Ibn al-Khattab said that "From now on they will get our bombs everywhere! Let Russia await our explosions blasting through their cities! I swear we will do it!" However, in a subsequent interview on 14 September to the Interfax agency in Grozny, Khattab denied responsibility for the bombings.

Chechen Foreign Ministry issued an official statement on 14 September condemning Moscow blasts, and affirming that "Ichkeria stands firmly against terrorism in any manifestation".

Domestic investigations

Criminal investigation and court ruling

In 2000, investigation of the Buynaksk attack was complete and seven people were convicted of the bombing.

Russia's pre-trial investigation of the Moscow and Volgodonsk bombings was finished in 2002. According to the Russian State Prosecutor office, all apartment bombings were executed under command of ethnic Karachay Achemez Gochiyayev and planned by Ibn al-Khattab and Abu Omar al-Saif, Arab militants fighting in Chechnya on the side of Chechen insurgents. Al-Khattab and al-Saif were killed during the Second Chechen War. According to investigators, the explosives were prepared at a fertilizer factory in Urus-Martan Chechnya, by "mixing aluminium powder, niter and sugar in a concrete mixer", or by also putting there RDX and TNT. From there they were sent to a food storage facility in Kislovodsk, which was managed by an uncle of one of the terrorists, Yusuf Krymshakhalov. Another conspirator, Ruslan Magayayev, leased a KamAZ truck in which the sacks were stored for two months. After everything was planned, the participants were organized into several groups which then transported the explosives to different cities.

According to investigators, the explosion in Moscow mall on 31 August was committed by another man, Magomed-Zagir Garzhikaev on the orders from Shamil Basayev, according to the FSB.

Court hearings on the Moscow and Volgodonsk attacks were held behind closed doors, and were completed in 2004. The process has produced 90 volumes of proceedings, 5 of which were classified.

Court rulings

According to the court ruling, Al-Khattab paid Gochiyayev $500,000 to carry out the attacks at Guryanova Street, Kashirskoye Highway, and Borisovskiye Prudy, and then helped to hide Gochiyayev and his accomplices in Chechnya. In early September 1999, Magayayev, Krymshamkhalov, Batchayev and Dekkushev reloaded the cargo into a Mercedes-Benz 2236 trailer and delivered it to Moscow. En route, they were protected from possible complications by an accomplice, Khakim Abayev, who accompanied the trailer in another car. In Moscow they were met by Achemez Gochiyayev, who registered in Hotel Altai under the fake name "Laipanov", and Denis Saitakov. The explosives were left in a warehouse in Ulitsa Krasnodonskaya, which was leased by pseudo-Laipanov (Gochiyayev). The next day, the explosives were delivered in "ZIL-5301" vans to three addresses—Ulitsa Guryanova, Kashirskoye Shosse and Ulitsa Borisovskiye Prudy, where pseudo-Laipanov leased cellars. Gochiyayev supervised the placement of the bombs in the rented cellars. Next followed the explosions at the former two addresses. The explosion at 16 Borisovskiye Prudy was prevented.

According to the court, 4 September Buinaksk bombing was ordered by Al-Khattab. Reportedly, since the perpetrators have managed to explode only one truck bomb instead of the two, Khattab called it a "botched job" and paid $300,000 for it, which was a part of the sum he originally promised. One of the suspects confessed having loaded the trucks with sacks in Buynaksk, but claimed he did not know what they were intended for.

The explosion in the mall on Manezhnaya Square was the subject of a separate court process held in Moscow in 2009. The court accused Khalid Khuguyev (Russian: Халид Хугуев) and Magumadzir Gadzhikayev (Russian: Магумадзаир Гаджиакаев) of organisation and execution of the 1999 explosions in the Manezhnaya Square mall and in hotel Intourist and sentenced them to 25 years and 15 years of imprisonment, correspondingly.

Sentences

Adam Dekkushev [ru] and Yusuf Krymshakhalov [ru] have both been sentenced to life terms in a special regime colony. Both defendants have pleaded guilty only to some of the charges. For instance, Dekkushev acknowledged that he knew the explosives he transported were to be used for an act of terror. Dekkushev also confirmed Gochiyaev's role in the attacks. Dekkushev was extradited to Russia on 14 April 2002 to stand trial. Krymshakhalov was apprehended and extradited to Moscow. Achemez Gochiyaev, the head of the group that carried out the attacks and allegedly the main organizer, remains a fugitive, and is under an international search warrant.

In a statement released in January 2004, the FSB said, "until we arrest Gochiyayev, the case [of the apartment block bombings of 1999] will not be closed." In an interview with Dmitry Gordon published on May 18, 2020, former GRU officer Igor Strelkov said that during the initial stage of the Second Chechen war, he was a part of a group which attempted to capture Achemez Gochiyaev.