is that none of the MSM accounts of this guy's death - and I've seen a number of them - mention the possibility that he had converted to Islam.

What's going on over here???

You would think they might jump at it to support the theory that he was killed by Russians for sympathizing with Chechyens.

In the case of the Moscow bombings, curiosity kills

Almost all those seeking the truth about a Russian terror campaign are now dead, writes Mark Franchetti

December 04, 2006

THE series of bomb attacks on apartment blocks in September 1999 claimed 300 lives and brought terror to the streets of Moscow and two other Russian cities.

Unknown terrorists had rented rooms on the ground floor of the apartment blocks and filled them with explosives that destroyed the buildings. Hundreds of dead and injured were plucked from the rubble as the attacks continued over many days and more than 30,000 Moscow buildings were searched as panic took hold.

The Kremlin pointed the finger at rebels in the breakaway republic of Chechnya. It used the blasts to justify a new wave of "anti-terrorist" operations and, a few weeks later, troops were sent back into Chechnya for a second time.

But doubts have persisted about the Kremlin's official version of events. Sceptics have argued that Chechen rebels had nothing to gain from planting the bombs. The Chechens had won the first war in 1996 and had already gained de facto independence.

The new war, however, benefited one man: Vladimir Putin, now Russian President. At the time he had only recently been appointed prime minister and was a little known figure among Russian voters.

In the space of a few months, as he took military action against Chechen separatists, his popularity shot up from 2 per cent to 70 per cent, mainly as a result of the image the war created. He was a man of action determined to go after Chechen terrorists.

As a result, critics of the Kremlin in Russia and the West have for years claimed that the Federal Security Service (FSB), the former KGB, played a role in the bombings.

This is an allegation that is vehemently denied by the Russian authorities. Putin has called it "immoral".

But whatever the truth about who planted the bombs, one incident in particular has raised suspicion over the role played by the FSB.

On the night of September 22, 1999, when tensions were at their height, a passer-by in the city of Ryazan, 180km southeast of Moscow, saw people unloading bags from a car boot into the basement of an apartment block.

The police were called and raided the building. They announced they had found a detonator and bags containing hexogen, the same explosive used in the other bombings. The Russian interior minister proudly announced that a terrorist attack had been foiled.

But only an hour later the Kremlin did an about-turn. Nikolai Patrushev, the head of the FSB and a close Putin ally, went on air to say that the suspicious powder discovered in Ryazan was in fact just sugar. The incident, he claimed, had been part of an FSB civil defence exercise.

The "sugar" was later blown up, preventing any further tests. The FSB went on to claim that the bomb expert who had identified the hexogen had made a mistake because his hands were tainted with the explosive. The bizarre incident led many to suspect that the FSB had planned to blow up the building and could also have been behind the other blasts, thus discrediting the Chechens.

In his book Blowing Up Russia, Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian spy who died from poisoning in London last month, set out to prove that theory.

Alexander Goldfarb, a close ally of the exiled Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky who had helped Litvinenko to flee to Britain, believes this is why he was killed.

Others who have sought to investigate the bombings have been silenced, too. Many conspiracy theorists believe investigating the bombing is a dangerous business.

In 2003, Sergei Yushenkov, a liberal member of parliament, was gunned down in Moscow in a case that remains unsolved. Yushenkov had set up an independent commission to investigate the bombings.

Later that year, Yuri Shchekochikhin, another MP on the commission, died in mysterious circumstances and is believed to have been poisoned.

Shchekochikhin was also an editor at Novaya Gazeta, the independent newspaper where fierce Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya worked until she too was shot dead in October this year.

Shchekochikhin was taken ill suddenly and developed awful symptoms: his skin peeled, he was covered in boils, his hair fell out and he suffered respiratory failure. His colleagues were unable to investigate his death because they were told that the autopsy results were secret and would not be released even to his relatives.

Some friends and colleagues suspect he was silenced because of his work on the bombings, although his other journalistic work - notably his probe into a financial scandal involving the father of an FSB deputy director - may also have made him a target.

In August 2004, Mikhail Trepashkin, who like Litvinenko was a former FSB officer who became close to Berezovsky, was arrested while investigating the bombings on behalf of the commission. He was thrown in jail on trumped-up charges of passing on state secrets to Britain.

Trepashkin had claimed Vladimir Romanovich, who rented the basement in one of the bombed buildings, was an FSB agent. Romanovich was hit and killed by a car in Cyprus a few months after the bombings.

Meanwhile, Otto Latsis, another commission member and editor of the liberal Russky Kuryer newspaper, was beaten unconscious shortly after Trepashkin's arrest.

Then there is the case of Politkovskaya, who wrote extensively about Chechnya, the bombings and crimes committed by the security forces. Two years before her murder, she was poisoned on her way to cover the Beslan school siege.

Conspiracy theorists believe the cases are linked and the FSB is determined to silence anyone who seeks to prove its complicity in the bombings.

Others, however, including many who believe the Chechens did not plant the bombs, say Litvinenko's death has caused far more damage to Russia's image than all his claims put together. Why should the Kremlin do such a counter-productive thing?

Similar arguments are put forward by those who do not believe the state was involved in Politkovskaya's murder. It may also be that Yushenkov was a victim of politics and Yuri Shchekochikhin was killed by criminals.

But on both sides of the fence, one thing is agreed: the truth about the 1999 bombings will never come out.

The Sunday Times

BEWARE OF SECRET SOCIETIES, AGENCIES, AND ORGANIZATIONS - THEY'RE DESTROYING THE WORLD.