The American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus

Double suicide attack in Moscow subway kills dozens during rush hour commute
Two female suicide bombers killed at least 38 people during a busy morning rush hour commute in the Moscow subway system on Monday, March 29. The blasts occurred 40 minutes apart on the Lubyanka and Park Kultury metro stations that are situated on the same metro line. The head of the Federal Security Service, Alexander Bortnikov, stated that based on preliminary assessments, there was a high likelihood that the attack was carried out by militants from the North Caucasus, but none of the militant groups have claimed responsibility for the bombings so far.

Various commentators in Russian media outlets also stated that the attacks were likely to have been carried out by North Caucasus militants in response to a series of successful counter-terrorist operations by the security services in recent weeks. On March 24, authorities in Nalchik, the capital of Kabardino-Balkaria, killed Anzor Astemirov, the chief judge of the Shari’a court of the North Caucasus Emirate, the third-most-senior position in the militant underground hierarchy. Astemirov was also the alleged organizer of the deadly 2005 raid in Nalchik by a large group of militants that killed 35 police and security personnel. Weeks earlier, another high-profile militant and religious ideologue, Said Buryatsky, was killed when authorities raided a militant hideout in Ingushetia.

The Kremlin has been struggling to contain a recent wave of suicide bombings and militant attacks in the North Caucasus region. In Chechnya, there were 11 suicide attacks between May and December of 2009 and two separate suicide attacks in Ingushetia severely wounded the Ingush president in June and killed at least 30 policemen when a suicide driver attacked a police headquarters building in August. Regional experts and activists have cautioned that ongoing human rights violations, the indiscriminate use of force by local and federal security services and the lack of an effective justice system, among other factors, contribute to the conflict by radicalizing marginalized elements of the local population.

Also last week, senior lawmakers from the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) headed by Dick Marty, the Assembly’s Special Rapporteur on the North Caucasus, travelled to the region and met with human rights organizations, officials in Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan and Alexander Khloponin, the Kremlin’s envoy to the newly created North Caucasus Federal District. Dick Marty will present his findings in a report on the human rights situation in the North Caucasus at the PACE session in June, 2010.