Lawyer Trepashkin Had Taken Few Precautions

Dissident lawyer and former KGB/FSB officer Mikhail Trepashkin, jailed after he raised questions about the 1999 apartment bombings and the 2002 tragedy at the Dubrovka theater, apparently took few precautions against possible countermeasures by his former colleagues. According to a January 14 article in the English-language Moscow Times, Trepashkin’s wife, Tatiana, told a reporter from that newspaper, Anatoly Medetsky, that he had conducted telephone conversations–including international calls–with fellow skeptics about his theories and the evidence for them. She said that Trepashkin knew that the authorities were probably eavesdropping on these conversations, but that he had explained to her in a letter from prison that he wanted “to live honestly and openly.”

Trepashkin’s wife, who now faces the prospect of raising two young daughters without their father, fears for his life. “In the best-case scenario, they will jail him for a long time,” she said. “In the worst-case scenario, they won’t be that ceremonious.”