– RIZHSKAYA BOMBING

 

On 08/31/2004, just a week after the Double Airliner Explosions, at about 21:00, a female suicide bomber blew herself up in the entrance of Rizhskaya subway station in North East Moscow. 10 people, including the female suicide bomber (see – Black Widows ), were killed in the explosion and more then 50 other wounded – 12 of them critically. The bomb was detonated just when a police officer approached the suspected perpetrator in order to question her.

According to Moscow police the explosion’s force was equivalent to one kilogram of TNT. The bomb was loaded with bolts and pieces of metal, designed to cause maximum damage. The attack was a part of a Chechen terror campaign and came just a day before the Beslan Horror.

“Khalid El-Islambouli Brigades”, the same ephemeral group that took responsibility on the Double Airliner Explosions, claiming, through Islamic websites, responsibility for the attack. It warned that the group supported the Chechen rebels, and that the attacks marked just the beginning in a series of planned operations. The claim’s veracity could not be confirmed.

Authorities later found the head of the bomber on the subway Rizhskaya station’s roof and claimed that she was identified as Roza Nagayeva, the sister of Amanta Nagayeva, who blew up one of the airliners a week earlier in the Double Airliner Explosions. Eventually the Russian authorities were proven wrong when Roza Nagayeva participated in the Beslan Horror as a female suicide bomber. Her body was finally identified through DNA samples only in 04/2005.

Epilogue ; 

* On 02/02/2007 a Moscow court sentenced three men: Maksim Panaryin, from Karachay-Cherkess Republic in the Caucasus, Tambiy Khubiyev and Murat Shavayev, an ethnic Balkar (a small Muslim nation in the Caucasus), to life imprisonment for facilitating the Moscow Metro Bombing from 02/06/2004 as well as the Rizhskaya  Bombing. The Moscow court also found Tambiy Khubiyev and Maksim Panaryin guilty of belonging to a militant group called “Karachai Jamaat”.

According to the indictment Maksim Panaryin and Tambiy Khubiyev were trained in camps in Chechnya and organized the suicide bombing under the orders of the ethnic Ukrainian Islamic militant Nikolai Kipkeyev. They assembled the bombs in Moscow.  

Lieutenant Colonel Murat Shavayev, the third suspect, who had two academic degrees, was formerly a Russian justice ministry official and denied all the charges against him. According to the indictment he bought explosives in the Moscow black market and handed the explosives over to the two other suspects. The trial had been closed to the public.

The three were caught after the police arrested few gun and explosive traders in Moscow black illegal market.

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* Eventually later Russian investigators found out that Nikolai Kipkeyev, the leader of Karachai Jamaat, who allegedly organized the bombing of the Rizhskaya metro station, was on the site to monitor his subordinate’s work and was himself killed in the blast.

* The real identity of the Rizhskaya female suicide bomber was never revealed to the public.

Summary ; 

* The sloppy, confused investigation of the Moscow Metro Bombing, which was focused on Chechen rebels and a female suicide bomber, enabled the same cell to carry out a second suicide attack – the Rizhskaya Bombing, about a half year later.  

 

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