Special services elaborated an identikit of a person suspected of implication in the terrorist act on the October Railway. The investigation found out that locals had seen a man getting over the enclosure and walking along the railings. From words of tree locals the police managed to compose an e-fit.
“According to descriptions given by local people three approximate portraits of a person supposedly concerned with the accident have been composed and then one common e-fit has been created,” told a deputy prosecutor of the Novgorod area Konstantin Karasev.
The suspected is a man of Slavic appearance with an oblong face, dark eyes, long nose and thin lips. He seemed to be in a cap or bold.
Some time before it was reported that some suspected had been detained. Two residents of the Leningrad area, members of one of forbidden parties of Russia were interrogated by the police and set free.
Meanwhile a one more detail appeared in this case. On Wednesday in the North Caucasian office of the Radio Svoboda called an unknown person who introduced himself as the second-in-command of the Riyad as-Salihin and announced that Chechen militants assumed the responsibility of the blowing up of the train.
Intelligence and diversionary shaheed battalion Riyad as-Salihin (lit. the Gardens of the Righteous) was headed by Shamil Basaev. The force took participation in the Dubrovka hostage-taking in November 2002 and was included in the list of terrorist organizations of the State Department of the USA.
There are no confirmations or denials of this information from other sources. At the moment the main version of the investigation is that the terrorist act has been organized by members of some national-socialistic organization. Version about “Caucasian trace” is also regarded but it is not the main one.
The police have already interrogated the leader of the Movement Against Illegal Immigration Alexander Potkin and the chief of the Novgorod department of this extremist organization Sergei Larionov just as the leader of the Chechen-Ingush society “Vainah” Salam Yunusov.
The fast train #166 “Nevsky Express” traveling from Moscow to St. Petersburg was derailed on 13 August on the section Burga-Malaya Vishera near the city of Novgorod. The officials argued that the derailment has been caused by an explosion. A bomb equivalent to 2 kg of TNT was set near the bridge across the Burga River. The terrorists apparently planned that the train would fall into the river that would entail serious victims. But the train went at extremely high speed and it managed to get over the bridge. 60 people were injured, 23 hospitalized. The General Prosecutor’s Office has launched criminal investigation of a fact of terrorism.
Just after the accident the FSB head Nikolai Patrushev named the derailment of the “Nevsky Express” to be evidence that the threat of terrorism in Russia had not been eliminated yet, and mentioned situation in Ingushetia. He promised to step up antiterrorist measures all over the Russia.
At the same time some experts are sceptical about terrorist act version. They suppose that the cause of the accident could be a technogeneous one, since there is a significant deterioration of tracks and equipment. So, according to him, the official version about terrorist act is designed to keep that fact back.
Yesterday the reconstruction of rails on the place of the accident was finished and the Russian Railway announced that since 6 p.m. movement of passenger trains on the span Burga-Malaya Vishera had been reestablished, According to the Russian Railway President Vladimir Jakunin, losses of the company could amount to 200 mln rubles.
