Statement in support of Andrew Mogilyansky

I am writing this because I can no longer stand aside and see Andrew Mogilyansky's name being smeared. I have no doubt that the information against him was fabricated by the Russian authorities. It both saddens and infuriates me that, in a chase for publicity and sensationalism, the Western authorities and media have chosen to take the FSB-produced "evidence" at faith, when the lies and the reasons for them are so plainly obvious.

I know this for sure, because I was there personally, and witnessed what Andrew was doing at the precise time in late 2003 when all these lies were being fabricated by Russia's secret police apparatus.

But rather than rush to conclusions, let me start from the beginning.

On October 23, 2002 a group of armed terrorists seized the Nord-Ost theater in Moscow and took over 900 theatergoers and actors hostage. Before the police could block access to the building, my friend Olga Romanova went into the theater and confronted the terrorists, demanding that they let women and children go. She was taken backstage and shot dead. She was 26 years old... Olga became the first victim of the infamous Nord-Ost siege. She is the most heroic person I ever knew.

The siege lasted 3 days and cost the lives of 130 innocent people, most of them dying from poisoning after Russian authorities deployed deadly gas when storming the building. The nearly 800 others who did not die right away were hospitalized in serious condition. Some of these survivors died later from gas poisoning complications, many others became handicapped for life.

Olga Romanova left behind elderly handicapped parents and a handicapped brother. They all lived together in a tiny Moscow apartment, and Olga was their sole provider. As soon as I heard of her death, I put out a call on the Internet to help Olga's family raise some money. I was very quickly contacted by Andrew Mogilyansky, who offered to help them. The date was October 26, 2002, and Russian troops were in the process of deploying the deadly gas at Nord-Ost...

It was not long before it became clear that many more people were dying. And it was then, On October 27 or 28, 2002, that Andrew Mogilyansky called me again and said that he was launching a much larger all-volunteer effort to help the families of all who died at Nord-Ost. He asked me if I would want to take part in this effort, to help gather information about the victims, and to help distribute assistance in the future. Even though at the time I was a unemployed single mother with a one-year-old son on my hands, I agreed: it was simply the right thing to do.

The project became known as MoscowHelp.org, and Andrew named the new charity the International Foundation for Terror Act Victims (IFTAV). This all-volunteer charity would go on to raise well over $1 million for the victims of the Nord-Ost (2002) and Beslan (2004) terror acts. I became a board member of IFTAV and worked for it for several years as a volunteer. Neither I, nor any of the more than 50 volunteers who worked for IFTAV, has received any money for our work.

But coming back to late October 2002, already at that time, at the very beginning of the project, Andrew warned me that, in his opinion, the project would be highly controversial, and its participants could become targets of intimidation or worse. Poor Andrew, if he only knew then how true his prediction would turn out for himself!

I spent the last months of 2002 and most of 2003 gathering very detailed information on all families who lost loved ones at Nord-Ost. I also spoke to many, many others who were hostages themselves but survived. This was no easy project: I had to locate the families of 130 random theatergoers and actors, many of them scattered around the world. The interviews with each family took hours of listening to terrifying words of grieving relatives. I think I probably aged 10 years in those few months after the attack...

The Nord-Ost victim families we were helping in late 2002 and 2003 quickly became a major Russian anti-regime movement. They were mad at the Russian government for using the deadly gas that killed their loved ones, and even more mad for the authorities and Putin for lying about it. Which the authorities and Putin personally were undoubtedly doing: the official story was that the gas was harmless, and everyone at Nord-Ost died from unrelated chronic illnesses. Supposedly the gas had nothing to do with it.

In February 2003, after coordinating with Andrew, I shared the information we gathered with several Nord-Ost activists. Using our information, they were able to pull enough people and resources to form ROO "Nord-Ost", a Russian NGO organization that quickly became a major irritant for the Russian authorities and Putin himself. Members of ROO "Nord-Ost" were organizing demonstrations, giving harshly critical interviews to the Russian and Western media, writing open letters, launching lawsuits against Russia, its government, and even Putin personally.

But it was not until September 2003 that their effort got a major scientific weapon proving that Putin lied, that knew in advance that 120 and 150 hostages would die when he gave the order to deploy the gas. This information galvanized the Nord-Ost movement, and I remember a major increase in their activities in the fall of 2003, after they had received the scientific proof that Putin ordered the murder of 125 innocent people.

And this proof was provided to them in September 2003 by none other than Andrew Mogilyansky.

I will not go into too much detail, which are thoroughly described in Dmitry Milovidov's Statement.

Not content with just providing anti-Putin activists with support and information, Andrew then proceeded to bring another vocal Nord-Ost activists Svetlana Gubareva to America, arranging her testimony to the FBI and a Grand Jury, and provided similar testimony himself (for more details on this, see the statements of Svetlana Gubareva and Alex Goldfarb).

Lest anyone doubt how dangerous what Andrew did was, I must state the obvious truth that Putin and his secret police apparatus will deploy all tools in their arsenal to crush anyone who comes after them. This is common knowledge now, but, sadly, was not yet so clear in 2003.

Fortunately, at the time Andrew was in the USA, where Putin's secret police could not reach him. Not yet. While the FSB was willing to assassinate people in countries like Qatar (e.g. the assasination of Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev) around that time, it was not until 2006 that they grew bold enough to order such blatant assassinations as the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in the UK. So, even though his actions were extremely dangerous, for the time being Andrew was relatively safe in the USA.

But not for long...

Unafraid of the consequences of his dissident activities, his desire to act against the Russian regime apparently overshadowing his sense of caution, Andrew flew to Russia in early December 2003 to finish the distribution of his charity's assistance and, more importantly in the present context, to help disseminate information about the gas. In doing this Andrew was openly taunting the Russian authorities to try to stop him. If he were killed on this trip, the uproar worldwide would have been enormous. Apparently, Putin could not afford such blunt action just 3 months before the upcoming March 2004 Russian presidential elections. But as we know now, the FSB came up with a better plan.

I should say that during this trip Andrew's activity involved so much Nord-Ost related work that I still do not know when he had time to sleep. I talked to him daily, often spent a full day with him poring over chsrity distribution records. In addition to working with me, he met and worked with Dmitry Milovidov (of ROO "Nord-Ost") and others victim relatives and activists.

And apparently, at least if you believe the "evidence" produced by the FSB and Putin's secret police apparatus, in addition to doing unquestionable, untarnished, critically important charitable work, and in addition to actively supporting and participating in very high-profile anti-Putin activities, at exactly the same time, in December 2003, Andrew also was recruiting child prostitutes from orphanages and operating a child prostitution service. This is absurd!

Not only does it not fit anything and everything I know about Andrew Mogilyansky, but also it is factually impossible, since I know first-hand that during his December 2003 trip to Russia Andrew had no time available to do anything else beyond his Nord-Ost and charity related activities.

Therefore, I call upon those at the FSB who manufactured this "evidence": have conscience, confess to your crime against Andrew Mogilyansky, tell the truth about who ordered you to do this. Maybe some of you are now retired or at least no longer dependent on Putin and the FSB - come clean, tell the truth! (In making this call I recognize that Litvinenko's fate will probably dissuade any others from responding to my call).

I call upon the Russian media outlets which repeated these allegations non-stop in 2008-2009: confess, tell the world who gave you the orders to run untrue stories, to tarnish the name of the person who helped so many with so much, but had the audacity to accuse Putin of murder!

And I call upon the Western media outlets which are recycling this garbage today, pretending to be oblivious to the self-evident fallacies in the "evidence" in front of them: stop, think, have some integrity, do not repeat allegations which stem from the dark corners of Russian secret services, all the while continuing to destroy the name of a person who has done so much good in his life!

Natalya Schedrina
April 14, 2016