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Moscow apartment bombing suspect acquitted
A jury in Dagestan on Tuesday acquitted a man charged with carrying out a 1999 apartment blast that killed 64 people and helped trigger Moscow's renewed military campaign in Chechnya, court officials said.

Magomed Salikhov was acquitted of charges of organizing the Sept. 4, 1999, explosion that destroyed a building housing Russian military officers and their families in the Caspian Sea town of Buinaksk, said Andrei Ashurov, a spokesman for the Dagestani Supreme Court.

The jury found Salikhov guilty of illegally crossing into Russia from Azerbaijan and using forged documents. Kurban Pashayev, the presiding judge, said Salikhov would be sentenced later this month.

Several other men were convicted in 2001 on charges of carrying out the explosion, and two of them, including Salikhov's younger brother, were sentenced to life imprisonment.

Prosecutors said they had been promised $30,000 for carrying out the blast by Omar Ibn al-Khattab, a Saudi-born militant who led rebel fighters in Chechnya, which neighbors Dagestan. Al-Khattab died in 2002.
Posted by: Dan Darling 2006-01-25
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=140726