A January 24 bombing at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport left 35 dead and scores injured, as the Russian capital’s transportation system was targeted by terrorists for the second time in less than a year.  The most likely culprits are Muslim terrorists from the North Caucasus who had struck Moscow’s metro system in March 2010.  In the aftermath of the bombing, a theory (“versiya”) explaining the attack emerged that linked the bombing to vengeance by Islamic groups for past Russian actions, along with a typically Byzantine plot connected to criminalized business and politics.

According to eyewitness testimony pieced together by Russian sources, a man and a woman carrying a suitcase entered Domodedovo at an unguarded entrance near the greeting area for arriving passengers.  In one account, the woman opened her suitcase and detonated a bomb.  But several other accounts have the man shouting, “I will kill you all!” before detonating an explosive belt on his person.  The focus of the investigation became the severed head of the dead man.  Russian media published grisly pictures, while ethnologists and forensics experts were consulted in hopes of determining the nationality of the attacker, who was likely not an Arab (as initially reported), but, as some experts saw it, had a “Slavic appearance.”

Investigators traced the bombing trail back to a December 31 explosion in a house on the outskirts of the Russian capital that killed a suspected female suicide bomber.  The explosives, apparently meant for a New Year’s Eve Moscow terrorist attack, had accidentally detonated.  Investigators found a connection between the woman and a North Caucasus Muslim terrorist group identified as the “Nogay Battalion” (Nogay Djamaat).  A number of suspected members of the Nogay group, which is reportedly responsible for a car bombing in southern Russia last summer, escaped following a series of arrests and the killing of the group’s leader by security forces last fall.  One of those who eluded the security sweep was Vitali Razdobudko, a Russian convert to Islam.  The versiya that took shape following the Domodedovo bombing had Razdobudko as the organizer of the airport attack.  The photo of the man investigators said was Razdobudko, released on January 27, did not closely resemble the (admittedly damaged) head of the suicide bomber.  Razdobudko was also allegedly behind a planned attack on Moscow’s Manezh Square, set for New Year’s Eve.

Manezh Square was the site of a nationalist riot directed against “people of Caucasian nationality” (Kavkaztsy) last December.  Rioting followed the murder of one the leading members of a Russian soccer-fan club (who often brawl with the Kavkaztsy) by a man from the Caucasus.  The murder sparked a series of disturbances, including the Manezh riot, in the Russian capital and in a number of Russian cities, and several Muslims from Central Asia and the Caucasus were killed, along with at least one Russian.  Investigators theorized that the Domodedovo bombing was carried out as revenge for the Manezh riot and the security crackdown on the Nogay group.

The Nogay/Razdobudko/Manezh versiya, however, has two “trails,” one of which may lead to criminalized business and its connections to Russian politics.  Several accounts of the December 31 explosion included a claim that the would-be bombers were being aided by a Moscow criminal gang.  Whether that aid consisted of finding a hideout for the terrorist strike team or of providing explosives and/or other equipment remains unclear, but the hint had been dropped: The Domodedovo bombing may not have been solely a Muslim terrorist attack.

Some Russian observers pointed out that President Dmitri Medvedev first blamed the Domodedovo Airport administration (managed by the East Line company) for security failures and chaos following the attack.  True, a number of mid-level transportation and security officers were fired in the wake of the bombing, but a common thread in critical assessments of Medvedev’s actions was that, as usual, no top-level security officers had been sacked.  The word in Moscow following the events was that East Line, which had been under political pressure for years, could be replaced as the Domodedovo manager—and that maybe the bombing was connected to a lengthy dispute between high-level “clans” over control of Moscow’s three airports.

East Line is considered by Russian Krem­linologists to be a front for a group of siloviky (current and former security and law-enforcement officials) headed by one of Putin’s old friends, Viktor Cherkesov.  The Cherkesov clan has been locked in a battle over controlling the airport with another siloviky group headed by rival members of Putin’s entourage, Viktor Ivanov and Putin’s longtime shadow and current vice premier, Igor Sechin.  The battle, which has been in progress for years, has involved lawsuits, kompromat (“compromising material”), and political maneuvering.  But it is not uncommon for Russian property disputes to result in bombings, kidnappings, or assassinations.  So a “clan” connection cannot be ruled out.