Suspect in Grozny bombing arrested and HR activists detained

Mar 16, 2003 Posted: 14:42 Moscow time (10:42 GMT)

VLADIKAVKAZ - Russian authorities have arrested a suspected organizer of the December truck bombing that destroyed the headquarters of the Moscow-backed government in Chechnya and killed at least 70 people, officials said Friday.

Deputy Prosecutor General Sergei Fridinsky said the man, who was detained Wednesday, was suspected of being "directly involved in the organization of this crime in Grozny," Chechnya's capital, the ITAR- Tass news agency reported.

Preliminary indications are that the suspect, whose name was not released, was a member of a group led by rebel field commander Shamil Basayev, Fridinsky said. But he said Basayev's involvement in the bombing had not been proven.

Suicide bombers in two trucks attacked the building in Grozny on Dec. 27, setting off devastating explosions that killed at least 70 people and wounded scores of others in the deadliest attack in Chechnya in months.

Fridinsky said three Chechnya residents detained earlier had been charged. He did not say what the charge was, but indicated it was complicity in the attack, saying they had at some point driven the trucks used in the attack to Grozny, where they had also found a place to store the trucks and living quarters for the attackers.

The bombing came three months before a planned March 23 referendum on a constitution for Chechnya, where Russian forces are fighting rebels in the second war in less than a decade. The Kremlin hopes the vote will promote stability and further discredit militants while cementing the republic as part of Russia.

President Vladimir Putin's chief spokesman on Chechnya, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, reiterated Friday that talks on an agreement detailing the distribution of powers between the federal government and Chechnya should be hold following the referendum, as another Putin aide had said Thursday.

However, Yastrzhembsky said those talks would be held only after presidential and parliamentary elections that are to held in Chechnya following the referendum, according to the Interfax news agency. No dates have been set for the elections.

Yastrzhembsky also said that polling stations will be opened at refugees camps in neighboring Ingushetia, allowing thousands of Chechens who fled there during the two wars to vote in the election without returning to the region, Interfax reported. Many refugees are afraid to return to Chechnya because of persistent violence.

A Moscow-based human rights group said Friday that it had received word that three Chechen rights activists had been detained at a checkpoint in Ingushetia near the Chechen border Thursday. The group, For Human Rights, said one of the men, Sulumbek Tashtamirov, had been on a hunger strike for two weeks to protest the referendum.

Critics of the referendum say it should not be held while violence persist in Chechnya and claim the results will be falsified, a charge Yastrzhembsky rejected.

//The Associated Press//