Russian Oligarch and Sharp Critic of Putin Dies Near London (Berezovsky)

[Paul E Ester]

9. Russia's secret service carried out a series of deadly apartment bombings.

Media tycoon Boris Berezovsky says he will ask the EU to investigate allegations that Russia's secret service carried out a series of deadly apartment bombings.

The former Kremlin insider who fell from grace after President Vladimir Putin's election said the 1999 attacks, which killed more than 300 people, "had no equivalent or precedent in Russia."

Berezovsky told a news conference in London on Tuesday that Putin was aware of the attacks. He said his information was from former FSB intelligence agents, investigative journalists and explosives experts.

The evidence has been compiled to form the basis of a documentary and a book, which Berezovsky unveiled at the press conference.

Sergei Yushenkov, who with Berezovsky chairs the political movement Liberal Russia, said the group would ask the Council of Europe to investigate the explosions.

Berezovsky said the investigation should look at the actions of Putin, who headed the FSB, the main successor to the Soviet KGB, until August 1999. At the time of the bombings Putin was prime minister.

http://articles.cnn.com/2002-03-05/world/russia.blasts_1_president-vladimir-putin-ryazan-fsb?_s=PM:WORLD

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_apartment_bombings

A similar bomb was found and defused in the Russian city of Ryazan on 22 September 1999. Two days later Federal Security Service Director Nikolai Patrushev announced that the Ryazan incident had been a training exercise.[2] This has led to the support of theories by Alexander Litvinenko (later murdered by an unusual radioactive isotope) and Anna Politkovskaya that the apartment bombings were carried out by the Russian secret service FSB (formerly KGB).