Achemez Gochiyayev

The five bombings took place during two weeks between September 4 and September 16, 1999, in Moscow, and the southern towns of Buynaksk and Volgodonsk. Gochiyayev has not been arrested or convicted and ostensibly remains a fugitive; he has not been seen since early March 2002.

Gochiyayev is an ethnic Karachay, born in the city of Karachayevsk in the North Caucasus. After finishing high school, he served in the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces. He had been living in Moscow for more than ten years. He ran a small construction company, Kapstroy 2000 in Moscow and got married in 1996. According to independent investigator Mikhail Trepashkin, Gochiyayev was an ordinary "russified Karachai" who lived in Moscow, and the information that he was an adherent of the Wahhabis came solely from a fabricated FSB investigation.

Gochiyayev rented premises at four locations in Moscow where bombs were found. He, Tatyana Koroleva and Alexander Karmishin were founders of the company that received shipments of the explosives, RDX, used in the bombings. When the two first bombs went off claiming more than 200 lives, he called the police to warn about two remaining bombs (at Borisovskie Prudy and Kapotnya). Those bombs were found at the addresses he had given, and were deactivated, preventing a large number of further casualties. Gochiyayev claimed that he was framed by an old acquaintance, an FSB officer who asked him to rent basements "as storage facilities" at four locations where bombs were later found.

According to the FSB, Gochiyayev received $500,000 from warlord Ibn Al-Khattab to carry out the attacks. The FSB released a picture showing the two together, claiming that it proved that the two had close links. The pictures appeared in response to a statement by Alexander Litvinenko that he has a letter from Gochiyayev denying any ties with Khattab. According to Litvinenko, a British forensic analyst was unable to determine if the man in the photo was Gochiyayev. Alexander Litvinenko was later murdered in London with polonium.

An independent public commission to investigate the bombings, chaired by Duma deputy Sergei Kovalyov, started its work in February 2002. On March 5, Sergei Yushenkov and Duma member Yuli Rybakov flew to London where they met Alexander Litvinenko and Mikhail Trepashkin. After this meeting, Trepashkin began working with the commission. According to Trepashkin, the person who actually rented the premises was FSB officer Vladimir Romanovich. Trepashkin located Mark Blumenfeld, the owner of the Guryanov Street basement warehouse in Moscow where the explosives were stored. Blumenfeld stated that the composite sketch of the man who had rented his basement was later replaced with a different sketch (of Gochiyaev) by FSB personnel. Blumenfeld said he was forced by FSB interrogators to testify against Gochiyaev. Trepashkin was unable to present his evidence in court because he was arrested a week before the trial, charged with illegal arms possession and divulging state secrets. He was convicted by a military closed court and sentenced to four years in prison. Romanovich was subsequently killed in a hit-and-run incident in Cyprus. Gochiyayev escaped to Georgia and later probably to Turkey, according to news reports. The last time author Yuri Felshtinsky and Litvinenko saw Gochiyayev was in 2002 to obtain his written statement, in which he admitted having helped to "rent these premises on Guryanov Street, Kashirka, Borisovskie Prudy and Kopotnya".

In 2010 a writer, Yulia Latynina, speculated that Gochiyayev might have been hiding in Turkey.

• List of fugitives from justice who disappeared