- (AFP) -- Russian police and FSB special service have
seized a load of books allegedly linking the FSB to deadly bombings in
1999 that led to the current war in separatist Chechnya, the books' sellers
said.
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- Some 4,400 issues of the book entitled "FSB blows
up Russia" and authored by former FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko,
now exiled in Britain, were confiscated en route from the western city
of Pskov to Moscow, Alexander Podrabinek of the Prima news agency said
late Monday.
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- "FSB officials said the books were seized as anti-government
propaganda," Podrabinek explained, adding that the seized load's whereabouts
were unknown.
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- Prima ordered the books, which were printed in Latvia,
for sale in Russia, in what Podrabinek said was a legal transaction "observing
all customs formalities."
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- Litvinenko, a former lieutenant colonel, charges the
FSB with involvement in the bombings on September 9 and 13, 1999 which
destroyed two buildings in Moscow, killing more than 200 people.
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- The FSB repeatedly denied any involvement in the attacks.
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- Nearly 300 people died in four explosions in Russia in
mid-1999, attacks that led to the launch of the ongoing war in Chechnya.
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- The war in Chechnya prompted a wave of nationalism that
swept Vladimir Putin, then the Russian prime minister, to the presidency
half a year later.
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- Litvinenko obtained political asylum in London after
blowing the whistle on an alleged plot by the FSB to assassinate the self-exiled
tycoon and Kremlin insider Boris Berezovsky, who had supported the conspiracy
theory behind the bombings.
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- Litvinenko was sentenced in absentia last month to a
three-and-a-half-year suspended jail term in Russia for abuse of authority.
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