Police captain pleads not guilty in planes bombing case

Itar-Tass
17.05.2005, 14.42

DOMODEDOVO, May 17 (Itar-Tass) – A police captain figuring in the
case over the bombings of two airliners last August, pleaded not
guilty at the trail.

“I have not committed this crime; I’m innocent,” Mikhail Artamonov
said.

The defendant filed a petition to the court to request the Prosecutor
General’s Office to attach to his case the copies of the air tickets
used by the suicide bombers to fly from Makhachkala to Domodedovo and
the evidence proving their departure from Moscow’s Domodedovo airport.

Artamonov also asked to attach to the case the footage which he claims
shows the suicide bombers, and the protocol of the questioning of
the police officers who had searched the terrorists before they flew
from Makhachkala.

He said he had not seen this evidence, but knows about its existence
from persecutors. He said he had no idea what persons were meant
because no identification procedures had been carried out.

Artamonov said he was unaware of any regulations under which he should
have taken the woman to the police station.

The police captain is accused of negligence that facilitated terrorist
acts on Tu-154 and Tu-134 airliners in August 2004.

According to investigators, female suicide bombers from Chechnya,
Aminat Nagayeva and Satsita Dzhebirkhanova, arrived at Moscow’s
airport Domodedovo on a flight from Dagestan’s capital Makhachkala.

The airport’s police took away their passports and turned over to
Artamonov the baggage of the two women for a check for explosives.

However, Artamonov did not inspect their belongings and let Nagayeva
and Dzhebirkhanova go.

They bought tickets for other flights with the help of Armen
Arutyunyan, a ticket scalper, who charged each woman 5,000 roubles
for procuring tickets rapidly.

Dzhebirkhanova happened to get a seat aboard the Tupolev-154 jet
of the Sibir Airlines bound for the Black Sea resort of Sochi.
Arutyunyan arranged her flight via Nikolai Korenkov, the airline’s
check-in manager whom he paid a thousand rubles for admitting the
terrorist aboard.

Just two minutes before completion of the check-in, Arutyunyan handed
over to Dzhebirkhanova her air ticket with Korenkov’s decision on it
clearing her for the flight to Sochi.

The Tu-154 and Tu-134 planes exploded in the air at a small interval on
August 24, 2004, near Rostov-on-Don and Tula. There were no survivors
among the 89 people on board.

On April 15, the Domodedovo court sentenced Korenkov and Arutyunyan to
18 months in prison, finding them guilty of bribery for personal gains.