Former Intelligence Officer Behind Probe of 1999 Bombings to Remain Behind Bars

MosNews
Sep. 16, 2005

Former FSB officer, Mikhail Trepashkin, is to remain in prison after a Russian court overruled a lower court’s decision to release him on parole. Trepashkin won the support of human rights activists for probing alleged government complicity in the country’s 1999 apartment bombings that claimed over 200 lives.

The former FSB officer, sentenced earlier to four years in prison for possessing an unregistered weapon and disclosing state secrets, remains in custody, his lawyer, Yelena Liptser told the Interfax news agency.

In doing so, the regional court of Sverdlov sided with prosecutors who protested an earlier ruling by a lower court in Nizhny Tagil ordering Trepaskin be released, Liptser said.

In late August, a Nizhny Tagil court ordered the release of the former FSB officer on parole.

Trepashkin and his supporters said that the charges against him were politically motivated — the former FSB agent led a lone investigation into the 1999 apartment bombings that were blamed on Chechen separatists.

Later the Supreme Court upheld the sentence handed down to Trepashkin.

Trepashkin’s supporters said his only crime was to have exposed evidence that pointed to government complicity in the killing of more than a hundred civilians during the 1999 apartment bombings in Moscow. Shortly before he was due to present his evidence in court, police stopped him on the road and claimed they found a gun in the trunk of his car.