REVIEW TOPICS:
Second explosive device at train crash site activated by mobile phone, Russian Federal Security Service says
Azerbaijan’s Minister of National Security meets with Director General of Italian Foreign Intelligence and Security Agency
Azerbaijan's security service agents and police confiscated illegal religious literature in Baku
Poland’s Internal Security Agency carried out arrests on corruption in mining industry
Poland’s Memory Institute keeps asserting that ex-President Kwasniewski was Communist agent
Czech dissident-artist objects to StB collaboration accusations
Second explosive device at train crash site activated by mobile phone, Russian Federal Security Service says
The Investigatory Committee of the General Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation, does not officially comment on media reports that the head of the agency, Alexander Bastrykin, had been injured as a result of the second explosion at the crash site of Nevsky Express train and was hospitalized, RBC reports.
Earlier the official media reported that Bastrykin and some other Investigatory Committee’s employees and policemen "had not suffered only by a lucky
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chance".
Today it was reported by several media outlets that Alexander Bastrykin has applied for medical aid to the 40th St. Petersburg City Hospital. According to unofficial information, after medical examination, concussion of the brain was revealed and Bastryking was hospitalized in the Traumatology department.
Previously, the Investigatory Committee expressed the view that the second explosion at the crash site of Nevsky Express train was directed specifically against the investigative team. The reports of explosives experts of the Federal Security Service of Russia, who established that the explosive device which exploded on November 28, in the vicinity of the investigators at the crash site had a remote control and was activated using a mobile phone speaks in favor of this version. This allows investigators to believe that the second explosion at the site could be directed against members of the Investigative Committee.
According to investigators, such a tactic has already been used by terrorists in the North Caucasus. Only recently in the Southern Federal District, several investigative teams arriving at the scene, came under fire from rocket-propelled grenades and bombing of booby traps.
Azerbaijan’s Minister of National Security meets with Director General of Italian Foreign Intelligence and Security Agency
Azerbaijan’s Minister of National Security, Lieutenant-General Eldar Mahmudov received Director General of Italian Foreign Intelligence and Security Agency, Vice Admiral Bruno Branciforte, news agency APA reports, referring to Public Relations Center of the National Security Ministry.
The questions connected with combating transnational organized criminality, global terrorism and other issues of primary importance as well as the development perspectives of fruitful cooperation between the intelligence agencies of the two countries were in the focus of attention at the meeting, news agency notes.
Minister Mahmudov acquainted his counterpart with the measures taken by Azerbaijan in respect to the security problems and provided detailed information about Armenia's – Azerbaijan's conflict over Upper Karabakh.
Italian Foreign Intelligence and Security Agency, Vice Admiral Bruno Branciforte expressed his satisfaction with the meeting with Minister Mahmudov and noted that the dialogue he held in Baku and exchange of information would contribute to further strengthening of relations between Azerbaijan and Italy.
Azerbaijan's security service agents and police confiscated illegal religious literature in Baku
The employees of the National Security Ministry and police departments of Balakan district of Azerbaijan’s capital city revealed 27 copies of banned religious books, 14 computer disks, two videotapes and six pamphlets with religious content, in the apartment of Bakhadur Muradov, news agency Trend News reports, referring to the press service of the Ministry of Interior.
Import and distribution of books of 59 titles which promoted religious intolerance and discrimination was prevented in Azerbaijan in 2008 by the security forces.
Analysis of the statistics of past years has been showing that the number of facts of bringing into the country and spreading of harmful religious literature has decreased in recent years, according to the State Committee for Work with Religious Organizations. This fact confirms the number of harmful religious literature including books, peer-reviewed in the committee, news agency adds.
During the inspection of the Akhly-Beyt perfume shop belonging to Muradov, 43 copies of religious books and pamphlets and one disk was withdrawn, Trend News adds.
Poland’s Memory Institute keeps asserting that ex-President Kwasniewski was Communist agent
Poland’s Institute of National Memory (IPN), without giving any evidence, continues to assert that former President Aleksander Kwasniewski was an agent of the Communist state security service, daily Gazeta Wyborcza writes. The paper notes that the article by the deputy head of the IPN Lustration Division Piotr Gontarczyk, which was promised several months ago, appeared in the Institute’ s bulletin, Oppressive Apparatus in People's Poland.
Gontarczyk alleges that in 1983-89, Kwasniewski was registered as an undercover employee with the pseudonym Alek under number 72204. Gontarczyk has no doubt that despite the decision of the Lustration court in 2001, rendered in favour of Kwasniewski he had been an agent. However, the historian does not support his words with new evidence: neither the personal file of Alek, nor any traces of his activity have been found. According Gontarczyk, all documentation was destroyed or stolen in 1989, although the historian does not say where he got this information.
The case of Alek emerged again in April. The IPN head Janusz Kurtyka declared then that the former President had been registered as an agent.
Gontarczyk calls particularly valuable new evidence revealed after the end of the lustration process of Kwasniewski the documents of the case under the provisional title, Teleecho. The name of a popular TV program in Poland was used by the state security service to name an action against the opposition, which in 1983 jammed the state television’s signal: the viewers of the Warsaw district of Ursinow saw on their TV the word ‘Solidarity’. To catch the perpetrators the secret service’s leadership requested secret data of agents registered in 62 streets of the district.
On the fifth page of the nine-page list it was indicated that an agent was living in Polynesian Street who deals with Captain Zygmunt Wytrwała. There was no name of the agent, but "this information corresponds to the 1983 passport data of Aleksander Kwasniewski, suggesting that he was living in Polynesian Street then," wrote Gontarchik.
Next Gontarchik passes to a document dated August 1986, when the Interior Ministry’s HR department requested a check of Kwasniewski’s file in connection with the award which he was supposed to receive. The reply that "he does not appear" in files of the State Security, Gontarczyk interprets as "appropriate to principles of secrecy for security service’s operational divisions”.
Another, indirect proof against Kwasniewski, according to Gontarczyk, is the fact that he as the President blocked the entry into force of the Lustration Law. The historian also questions the conclusions of lustral process in 2000, "It took place against the background of a massive campaign against lustration conducted by media and, above all, the circles connected to Gazeta Wyborcza".
The historian, a former IPN member Professor Andrzej Friszke told Gazeta Wyborcza that blaming Kwasniewski for his alleged undercover agent’s past only on the basis of one existing record is not right, because there was no information on whether there had been any meetings, reports, denunciations, or that he had received money.
Poland’s Internal Security Agency carried out arrests on corruption in mining industry
Poland’s Internal Security Agency, ABW, detained the director of the Staszic mine, the former director of the mine and three employees of Borynia Jastrzebska Coal Company for alleged corruption and mismanagement, daily Gazeta Wyborcza reports today.
Internal Security Agency’s Katowice directorate’s agents detained Stanislaw L., director of the Staszic mine the day before yesterday. He was taken to hospital immediately instead of questioning as he felt bad during the action of the security service. The doctors have concluded that the director can testify before investigators and he was arrested three months. According to investigators, the director demanded bribes from contractors and took them in return for signing contracts for the supply of equipment or underground work. As a result, the mine was suffering losses.
In his case, the amount of bribes exceeded 200,000 PZL, according to prosecutor Zbigniew Pustelnik, head of department for fighting organized crime of Prosecutor's Office of Appeal in Katowice.
Yesterday the ABW detained Bogumil S., a former director of the Borynia mine and currently vice president responsible for mining works of Jastrzebski Repair Factories (firms belonging to Jastrzebski Coal Company), Stanislaw M., until recently a member of the board of material logistics company JSW, and Adam R., former employee of the JSW executive board. They all are suspected of corruption in the years 2004-2008 and activities harming the JSW, and they also were arrested. Previously similar allegations were brought against Jozef S., JSW bureau worker. In their case, the amount of bribes oscillated from 70,000 to 300,000 PLZ, according to the prosecutor.
Czech dissident-artist objects to StB collaboration accusations
Former Czech dissident and artist Joska Skalnik today accused the Institute for Studies of Totalitarian Regimes (USTR) of releasing incomplete and distorted information concerning his contacts with the former Communist secret police StB and said all his contacts with the StB were forced out and harmed no-one, news agency CTK reports.
In a statement today, Skalnik said he had never provided the StB with information on the establishment of the Civic Forum (OF), a broad-based driving force of the fall of communism in then Czechoslovakia in November 1989. Skalnik said he had never been assigned by the StB to work against the US embassy in Czechoslovakia, as the USTR suggested in its documents.
He told CTK today that the USTR material was incomplete and pointed to the fact that the file the StB had on him was destroyed in December 1989.
AIA already wrote that Stanislav Penc initiated a petition demanding the dismissal of USTR director Pavel Zacek. As the main argument he pointed to the fact that in its publication on the establishment of the OF the USTR branded Skalnik as a StB collaborator without having listened to Skalnik's version of the story.
The daily Lidove Noviny wrote yesterday that according to the USTR documents, Skalnik had been informing the StB for many years about his meetings with employees of the US embassy in Czechoslovakia.
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